


Protea

by Boku_no_Botanist



Category: Marvel
Genre: Alpha Steve Rogers, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Concubine!Steve AU, F/M, M/M, Omega Tony Stark, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:01:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23665033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boku_no_Botanist/pseuds/Boku_no_Botanist
Summary: After witnessing the injustice done onto his parents, Steve Rogers sneaks into the Ferrite Royal Palace to try and find answers. Fate decides to saddle him with solving shady scandals while unknowingly becoming involved with the nation’s omegan king, Anthony.And deal with all the baggage and drama that comes along with it.Or…A Concubine!Steve AU
Relationships: Other Relationships, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 26
Kudos: 44





	1. Tosaíonn sé le Bás

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! This is my newest passion project. I will honestly be focusing on this. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Bless Mairi, Soul and Blade for Cheer Reading with me. This is the fruit of y'all's encouragement!!!
> 
> World Building Notes at the end of the chapter!
> 
> This marks the start of the first arc of the story: Steve's Childhood and Adolescence
> 
> \- Boki 🌸

**I**

Steve wished he had listened to his father.

His only intention was to keep him safe. Or, at least, that was the first reason. Because it was bad luck to go off on his own on the New Year. Steve was rather small for an alpha boy of twelve and wandering the streets of the capital was never a safe endeavor for children that looked like him: small, delicate, cute. They always went missing on the days of the Thawing.

Winter had crept into the capital of Ferrite quickly with a subtlety that his mother said would precede a great tragedy. She feared he’d catch ill once again, but he stayed well. His only grievance was how he couldn’t play outside, his clothes too thin to stay out in the snow for long. And how food came harder to get, even when his father tried for game in the deeper wood. And the slow fire that he and his parents had to sleep by in the middle of their home to stay warm. No, Steve was not fond of winter, and he was not sad when it eventually left.

And so as the cold months had passed by and the claws of winter wind and frost dulled as the days crept along slower and the nights faster, the days of the Thawing had drawn closer and closer. Those precious days in Ferrite where the snow became small creeks and washed away the pain and troubles carried by the people as they readied for the New Year. The chipping ice shattering along the stone streets, jolting people from their wallows and providing them proof of their turning fortune.

The Thawing days came, and the capital quickly fell into step with the everlasting dawn of spring. The farmers began their seasonal plans, the marketplace tossed aside their bleak winter emptiness and pulled out their décor, painting the capital streets with color and vibrancy. The nobility began to crawl from their luxurious cages and became interactive with the rest of the common folk as the palace servants began to carry out their preparations for the New Year’s festivities. Festivities that all would get to partake in.

Just like Steve was trying to.

“I just think that I’d be really good at it,” He had argued, a petulant pout on his face as he played with his breakfast. “It’s good money, and I’d meet some really important people.”

His father was silent and then hummed, almost like an afterthought, as if Steve’s argument wasn’t even worthy of a meager response. His face soured more.

“I know you’d be good at it,” the sudden validation made him look up from his bowl, attentive as his father had set aside his newspaper. “That isn’t my issue.”

“Then why –”

His mother had cut him off, “I’m performing today and tomorrow at the Capital Pavilion and you’re gonna be there, so why would we let you do go around the upper capital to give New Year’s greetings to the nobles?”

His father started turning away, nodding silently, as if Sarah had taken the words from his mouth.

Steve sighed, shoving another spoonful of porridge into his mouth. So this was the second - somehow more important - reason, “You’re not performing all day.”

“No,” his mother acknowledged, shuffling around the room, laying out her special silks she’d be wearing for the day. “But your father and I’d rather you stay at the pavilion than go running around with the mondanas to give New Year’s greetings to old hypocrites dressed in blood silk.”

“Easy, Sarah,” his father raised a hand in her direction and turned back to Steve. “She’s right, of course, we’d rather you be bored at the pavilion than risking trouble with mondanas. They’re not people you have children around.”

Carrying his empty bowl to the door of the house, Steve rolled his eyes, “You just think I’ll get into a fight if I’m running around.”

“That, too.” They had said it unison, perfectly in harmony.

His eyes widened, shocked at how readily they answered, “I would not! I don’t get into fights all the time.”

Halting her pacing, Sarah looked at him, a small frown delicate along her face, “Steven Grant you got carried home by Bucky yesterday because you were fighting.”

“Those kids had it coming,” he argued, coming back to the table. “They were being bullies…”

His father stood up, stretching and popping his limbs along the way, “Steven, the majority of the children in this city will grow up and still be bullies, you can’t fight them all every day.”

Pursing his lips, he looked away from his father’s indifferent stare, muttering, “I can try, though.”

“Oh, Joseph,” his mother sighed dramatically, gathering her silks to go change in one hand and caressing her stomach with the other, “this child will be the end of us, we’ll both be dead before the other one’s born.”

His father walked near him, gently wrapping a warm hand around the boy’s tiny scruff, “Steven, stop killing us.”

He had acted mildly annoyed after his father let go, but he cracked a smile after he had heard the jest in his father’s tone and smelt the scent of alpha joy.

.oO0Oo.

He was obedient for his mother’s performance. Sitting quietly with his father and Bucky as they watched his mother elegantly play her fiddle alongside the Royal Orchestra. The melody had been soft and haunting, gradually becoming bolder and uplifting – a symbol present throughout the Thawing days festival. A symbol that as death leaves, life is born anew.

His good behavior had softened his parents’ hearts (as it always did) and they let him run around with Bucky as the sunset began to make its crawl to the horizon’s edge. Giving a stern warning to be home before they had the lantern lit and to stay together. Steve no longer had to watch the following day’s performance.

Naturally, as according to his plan, he went to the mondana house. Bucky had lingered outside, complimenting the beautiful men and women as they flitted about the building. They were still together, and Steve planned to be home in time before the lantern was lit. He was following instructions.

When talking to the head mondana, he smiled, feigned his ignorance about the payment for doing the New Year’s greetings, and waited for her cold words.

“You’re a bold little urchin to think you’d even be able to ask about this job,” her tone made the words cut harsher than they would’ve read on paper, her face unmoving and gaze unrelenting. “You’re aware that it is a task of the utmost importance in maintenance to the respect between the nobles and our house. No mistakes in the recitation, the greeting routine, and especially the small talk afterwards.”

He had felt slightly nervous, but he squared his shoulders and returned her intimidation with comprehension, “I understand. My mother is in the Royal Orchestra, and she works hard to make sure her playing is perfect.”

“I’m sure that I can do the same,” he smiled.

The head mondana’s eyes had narrowed. She reached behind her skirts to bring out a small roll of paper and handed it to him.

Opening the roll, Steve leaned back as he looked at the elegant curling penmanship, the long passage of words filling his vision.

“Read it aloud,” she said, curt. “Perfect pronunciation, confidently, no mistakes.”

Looking to her and back to the parchment, he sighed and placed it away from his eyes. He began to recite the greeting, head high and eyes forward. He spoke at a steady pace until his face scrunched in hesitation and the last verse tumbled out in an awkward fashion.

Her face read of haughty triumph, delighting in his failure. He handed her back the parchment and waited for her heckling.

She smiled at him, condescending in every measure, crow’s feet crinkling through her makeup due to her pure amusement and pupils dilated from the pleasure of her small victory.

“A bad memory and illiteracy won’t be of any worth to me, boy,” she said, pausing long enough to see if Steve wanted to try and defend himself.

Yes, he would.

“I got stumbled because of the spelling errors on the paper,” he said matter-of-factly, head down and eyes to the floor. “There’s a lot of them in there, especially near the end.”

And the statement through her off. Eyes wide at the audacity of the implication, she spread open the parchment, looking at the writing and then slowly lowering the paper to look sheepishly at him. She had cracked a smile at him, strained to barely hide her embarrassment.

“My memory’s perfect,” Steve had managed with a polite grin, “Tell me what it should say properly and I’ll always recite it correctly.”

“Is that so?” she replied, her words slow and delicate, as if they would have preserved her elegance to him. “I suppose an indomitable memory would be of great use to me after all.”

She gave an awkward chuckle and averted her gaze when Steve boldly looked in her direction. How quickly the tables can turn during a conversation would never cease to amaze him. These were the moments he loved: proving to another that he was _so_ much better than what they assumed of him and _stunning_ them into fluster and embarrassment.

Maybe it was stupid alpha ego because in the back of his mind he knows he’s probably acting like a… like a bully, and - yeah - maybe his parents would scruff him and box his ears if they ever caught him posturing like this in front of _strangers_ , but he rarely ever had a moment to preen under the successes of his own design. He’d take whatever he could get for himself. He doesn’t knock people when they’re down; he just drags haughty people back to the ground that everybody else walks on. So, yes, he’d unashamedly relish in moments such as this.

Eyes crinkling in the corners from his own continuous victory, he reached to the lounge table between them and snagged a small tart crisp. He bit into it, immediately downing half of it as the satisfying snap of a perfectly cooked delight reached his ears.

Pausing, he held the crisp just away from his mouth and looked at the head mondana, and grinned. His eyes, so often complimented for being so beautiful and large like the omega he _wasn’t_ , glittered with the pride of an alpha who won with his wiles.

“I’ll take the pay after I finish the morning shifts.”

.oO0Oo.

The silks Steve was given for the greetings were too much for him to sneak in his house without notice, so Bucky took one for the team, holding onto them and promising to wake up early to meet Steve so he could change in the morning.

He had woken up before his parents did, wrote them a note that he was hanging out with Bucky all day and took off before either of his parents could smell the trail of excitement he left behind.

They had run to the mondana house, and while Steve changed with the help of his greeting partner, Bucky was being rewarded for his _valiant sacrifices_ with angel cake by the other mondanas. 

Steve smirk as he glanced at his friend, happily accepting the goodies the mondanas kept giving him, “You having fun over there, Bucky?”

His tone was knowing, giving a small chuckle when the other boy stuck his tongue out at him. He heard his greeting partner shush him and turn his head straight as she began to touch up his hair.

“ _I_ am having the time of my _life_ ,” Bucky said, leaning back into the arms of an older omega girl. “Must be hard having to slog all morning in stuffy silks while I get to hang out and eat with all these beautiful dames.”

Bucky flashed a handsome smile at the mondanas, and they giggled and turned away in mock flush.

“Oh, please,” Steve huffed in false offense, his partner gunted at him in frustration and he gave her a brief look of apology before continuing, “you only get to hang out with them at all _because_ I’m going out in these stuffy silks.”

His partner briefly left to grab more of his ensemble and he turned back to look at Bucky and the other mondanas as they laughed amongst themselves. A few of the boys and girls looked at him, almost as if they knew he wasn’t done with his rebuttal.

“Dames, I am so sorry you have to watch my friend while I work,” his tone is mocking, obviously intended to poke jest at his friend. He even bends into an exaggerated bow, smiling as he hears the mondanas laugh. “Rest assured, he will pay you back for your hospitality once I give him his half of the money.”

Bucky, who was shaking his head at Steve’s display, nearly choked on his tart as he looked up at him with shock and betrayal.

Immediately, the mondanas surrounding him perked up and some made room to leave, rushing about the room to pull out games or leave the room.

“Oh, he was going to pay us? How thoughtful!”

“How _rude_ of us. we’ll have to bring out better snacks! Kellan, go to the kitchen!” 

“Don’t worry, Bucky,” said the girl who still held the boy in her lap, running her palms down his shirt. “I promise me and the dames will earn our money’s worth. You’ll have the time of your _life_.”

Bucky only chuckled nervously, thrown off his game because while he believes the girl that he’s going to have a great time after Steve leaves, he isn’t sure how he feels knowing that he’ll be bled dry of his money by the end of it.

His partner called his attention, and he turned to feel her tilting his head up, stiffening as she knotted a thin bow around his collar.

“Good,” she leaned back, hand to her chin as she looked pondered. Twirling her fingers, she had him turn around as she gave him a once-over. Making sure his silk suit didn’t look a centimeter out of place, his face was clean, his hair kempt, and his shoes spotless. “You’re ready.”

“Oh,” an omega boy cooed as he looked over at them, “Dang, you outdid yourself! He looks so cute, I could eat him!”

The remark caught him off guard and he felt his ears start to burn. He couldn’t see it, but his partner must’ve made an ugly face to go with the disapproving sound she made at the omega.

“Sorry, Peggy.” The other mondana merely pouted and turned his attention back to Bucky, who was being crowded by even more mondanas and snacks.

His partner looked back at him, a small smile on her face, “Well, I’m finished with you. Ready to take off?”

Taking one more look at the site of Bucky’s growing financial burden, Steve laughed and smiled back up at her, “Yeah, let’s get started.”

As they took off from the mondana house, he called back to Bucky, waving a playful goodbye. He laughed again when he never heard a response from his friend and only heard the giggles and suggestions of the ever growing crowd of mondanas. By the time he reached a certain point away from the building, the last thing he heard was a faint “play a game with us, Bucky!”

* * *

* * *

The New Year’s greetings went by smoothly. Steve’s partner was an older mondana named Peggy. She was a pretty beta with a confident voice and a get-it-done attitude. They struck up a conversation and found good company in each other. Steve quickly realized that Peggy was definitely a mondana that was reserved for conversation rather than tea pouring, cake serving or other services, which seemed fitting. She was the reason the mondanas had their respect rather than their stereotype.

From estate to estate, Steve and Peggy recited the New Years greeting, politely reciprocating the delighted smiles of the nobles who opened their doors to witness the mini tradition. They took the backhanded compliments to their speech and manners despite their lower status well enough and managed to hold face when subjected to the remarks of marriage and worthiness to the nobles’ children.

Steve then understood why the head mondana had stressed politeness in small talk so much. So much peacocking and blabbering and off-hand remarks about worth and status and fortune was enough to make him lose his cool if he didn’t have the constitution of ox. When walking to the different estates, Peggy would give him methods to channel in the growing annoyance and tips on how to deal with the advances ---

_The advances!_

He knew that he easily passed as a young omega, always did. He was small, had large eyes, soft skin and a small mouth. His scent output was always weak – to the point where no one would believe he was an alpha until he was pissed off enough, and his dormant little alphan wrath wafted out for everyone to witness.

But, _wow_ , the amount of jokingly-but-maybe no-so-jokingly marriage propositions for alpha sons or grandsons took its toll on him as the morning progressed.

He tried to follow Peggy’s advice, observe how she flawlessly laughed off their, just, brazenly rude remarks and probes and tried to replicate, but he had met his limit when they had arrived at the house of the Minister of Censors.

He was an old man, likely the oldest of the kingdom’s ministers from what Peggy had told him, who had made such a _lovely_ advance towards Steve on behalf of _himself_ that he felt it was only his responsibility to be as bluntly honest as possible to the poor, hapless soul.

“I cannot believe you called the Minister of Censors a _lecherous pig_ ,” Peggy huffed, quickly pacing down the street, traversing back to the lower part of the capital. Steve kept a light jog to keep up with her, heaving hard as he tried to stifle his laughter, which only seemed to bubble out harder the more he tried to cease it. Peggy whipped her head around to look at him, face scrunched in disbelief. “Are you seriously not done laughing? I nearly shit myself trying to smooth things over with the Minister.”

He shook his head and tried to look up at her, his face was red, his eyes pricked with tears, smiling from ear to ear, “I’m sorry… seriously, oh God, wow--” he paused as another burst of laughter ripped out of him, arms clutching his ribs. “But the _look_ on his face! And he sputtered! And tried to lecture me about the meaning of the word-- but I told him I knew what it meant. And then when it finally clicked for him that I was an alpha, oh God my chest hurts!”

Finally having a moment to calm his breath, he looked back at her, smile still wide, “I’m sorry, Miss Peggy - I really am, but, wow. What happened back there just made my whole day!”

Peggy still looked at him sternly, but after a few more moments she let out a gust of air from her nose and cracked a smile, a warm chuckle escaping her, “I mean, yes, it was actually funny. But still -- oh, it doesn’t matter, he’ll come by the house for a late dinner tonight anyway. I’ll continue to make it up to him then.”

He stretched his arms out wide and looked up at the noon sun, “What a wonderful way to start the New Year!”

“Easy, there, Rogers,” Peggy cautioned with a mirthful smile, “It’s only noon. A lot can happen before the day’s end.”

Arms falling to his side, he looked at her, thoughtfully. She was going to ask him what was wrong, but he spoke before she could question it.

“I am sorry about what happened,” he said, honestly sincere, “it must be tough to be a mondana. Constantly dealing with all the condescension and lechers. You kept telling me to ignore it, but I still lost it and said something I shouldn’t have.”

Peggy stopped walking and stared at him before bending down to look him in the eyes, contemplative.

“You’re very sweet,” she finally said. “But it’s alright. You’re just lucky that I was your partner for the greeting. I don’t know if another mondana could have saved you from the Minister’s embarrassment.”

“Thank you, Miss Peggy.” He smiled at her, a small, sweet one. It caught her by surprise, perhaps understanding a little more how he managed to keep receiving passes without trying.

Straightening up, she kept her gaze, “Of course. Now, there’s a nice tiramisu stand not too far from here. Why don’t we go get a --”

“That’s him!”

Surprised by the outburst, the two looked to the source of the voice, startled to see a bassnato, a humble man, quickly rushing to them with policemen at his tail. For someone like Steve, a bassnato himself, seeing the police come near him never had a good outcome.

The man, a beta that reeked of terror and excitement, pointed at Steve, “That’s the Rogers boy.”

Without speaking the officers pulled out a large parchment of paper and held it up to the boy’s face. Turning his head to peer at it, his eyes widened to see a sketch of his face with his birth and family written in bold next to it.

The officers looked between Steve and the poster and then to each other, nodding. One took a step forward, hand reaching over his head, ready to scruff him. A deep-rooted sense of dread seeped in his blood and made his body freeze in fear.

“You need to come with us --”

“Excuse me,” Peggy shoved herself between Steve and the officer, reaching to snatch the poster out of the other officer’s hands. “You have the wrong boy.”

The bassnato snorted, “Like hell I do. That’s the Rogers boy! Looks exactly like the boy in the posters.”

Straightening the poster in her hand, she read over the brief notes near the side of the boy’s image. Looking back at the officers, she sneered.

“Officers, this is a gross mistake.” she began, flipping the post around to let the officers look at it with her. “It says here that this ‘Steve Rogers’ is a young bassnato alpha who lives with parents near the woodland.”

“Well, yes,” one began, “we’re aware --”

“Well then let me make you aware, _sirs_ ,” she cut through him, her gaze and tone making the officers jerk and straighten their postures, “that this boy with me is not this ‘Steve Rogers’ on the poster. _This_ ,” she pointed at Steve, he stood off to her side, shaking, “is _Grant_ , our newest mondana. And you’re terrifying him. _Stop it_.”

Turning around, she rolled the poster in her hands and kneeled down to bring Steve close to her chest. “It’s alright,” she started to sooth, “these officers were mistaken. They think you look like some lowborn boy from the backwoods. They’re not going to take you.”

He knew that she was flawlessly trying to make her false story seem real. And if he wasn’t scared out of his mind, he would feel impressed and awed. Instead, he fell into her arms, hiding his face into the crook of her neck. She was even pushing out a comforting beta scent, and boy was he grateful.

He could hear the bassnato trying to convince the officers that he hadn’t misled them. And he felt Peggy turn her head and shout more words at the group, piling on more flawless lies about his new false identity. He swore he heard a small _thwack_ , and he felt Peggy stiffen a little, and the officers spoke again, something mean in the distance, and then something soft to Peggy. He let out a shaky breath he didn’t even know he was holding once he heard the officers leave, dragging the beging bassnato with them.

They had believed Peggy. They believed that he was an omega named Grant who lived in a mondana house. The image used on the wanted poster did look like him, but not quite. Whoever did it heard that he was an alpha and all other considerations of detail had to have been ignored because the boy on the poster had a squarer jaw than he did, and smaller eyes, and a larger mouth.

For once in his life, Steve was so thankful that he was so easily mistaken for an omega.

Peggy slowly pulled him from her neck and looked at him, “They left. It’s okay now. Look at me.”

He managed to meet her gaze, but still felt scared. He could feel the redness in his cheeks and the sting in eyes from the welled-up but unshed tears.

“Why did you do that?” he warbled out, internally cursing himself for how pathetic his voice sounded.

She understood his implication, “I know I’ve only known you for one morning, but God, I can tell when someone is bad enough to deserve a wanted poster - and, sweetie, it isn’t you.”

Looking around, she let out a shake exhale when she saw the area still vacant. Turning back to him, she stood up, “But the fact that you do have a wanted poster has me very concerned. It’s not safe down the main streets. Come with me. I know another way to the mondana house.”

Clutching his hand, she dragged him with her into the nearest alleyway. Quickly and carefully, she navigated the intricate layouts of the close knit buildings, warning him of surprise stairways and dips. When she saw passersby, she slowed down, lowered her head and drew as little attention to them as possible, using her body to shield their view of Steve if they ever flittered their eyes to the pair.

Eventually, the mondana house came to few, and Peggy’s pace picked up, squeezing tighter onto Steve’s hand. The large stone walls of the gate decorated with pastels of spring, mondanas fluttering out and in with giggles and poise.

Suddenly, Peggy saw several mondanas rush past the gate, fear coming from them. And then Steve snatched himself from her hand and dashed by her in a flash of pale gold and cerulean.

“Bucky!”

Turning her head, she sped after him, relieved to see that he merely sped off to his friend.

But that boy also carried a scent of fear and a face of horror that failed to cease her dread.

“ _Steve_ ,” she heard the boy hush out his name. “Thank God, I found you! Oh, God, we… Steve it’s _bad_. It’s so bad.”

Steve stepped back, tense, and shakily spoke, hushed and frantic, “Bucky, what’s going on? I’m being looked for by the police --”

“The mondanas and I,” the older alpha started, voice shaky as well, “we all went to the pavilion. They wanted to go entertain by dancing to the music -- the Queen Mother was _there_! But -- God, the Royal Guard showed up, something about traitors hiding in the crowd.”

“Traitors?” Steve echoed, shocked.

“Yeah, and --” Bucky jumped when the wind kicked up behind him. “They asked the Queen Mother if they would raid the crowd -- she said yes and they immediately started pulling alphas and betas from everywhere in the pavilion. The crowd, the dancers, the orchestra, everyone who was there!”

Peggy stepped forward, “Bucky what were they looking for?”

The boy looked at her, as if he was surprised to see her, and then he looked away, brows furrowed and jaw tight, thinking. He looked to the both of them again, “The Bandas Poveros.”

“Who?”

Peggy placed a hand on Steve’s shoulder, “I know of them. The Poor Men’s Band. A militia of bassnatos that attack nobles who mistreat the lower class and help runaway slaves get shelter. They’ve been active for several years, why are they only now being looked into?”

“The guards said that they killed several noblemen in the past few days, that’s why!” Bucky hushedly shrieked.

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve snapped for his attention, voice curled in a growl. “What does that have to do with the police searching for me?!”

The boy swallowed, lip trembling, “They pulled out my uncle. Then some guards said they found the leaders, and then they dragged your parents out from the crowd.”

Steve stiffened, and then his shoulders sagged, and then he shook his head, and then he shook it faster. Bucky stepped towards him as he started to pull on his hair, “Steve --”

“My parents aren’t traitors!” the younger alpha yelled. His eyes wet with tears again. “They’re not the leaders of some rebel group! They’re not murderers!”

“Steve --” Peggy tried to speak.

“My ma’s member of the Royal Orchestra,” he was shaking. “My dad's a shoemaker! My ma’s about to have a _baby_! How could they be traitors? How could they have killed anyone?”

“ _Steve_ ,” Bucky grabbed his arms, jerking him up to look at him. “My uncle is a coroner. They took him, too. It doesn’t matter if they are or aren’t part of some secret rebel group. What matters is that now that they’ve called traitors, you and I have prices on our heads. We need to hide.”

Peggy placed her hands on their shoulders, “We’ll hide you boys in the mondana house. We’re great at keeping the police away. You’ll be safe here.”

Steve kept shaking his head. He let out a ragged breath, “No, I -- Bucky where are they now?”

“They’re still at the pavilion,” Bucky replied. “It’s become a rounding area the guards are keeping the outed members. They brought pyres and oxen with them, they’ve been preparing for this.”

His eyes were vacant, a hollowness through the glass of the tears. Wiping his face, he turned, “Thanks, Buck.”

And dashed past him and Peggy, rushing towards the main street, downward to the pavilion. He shouldn’t be running, not in the shoes he had on, but nice shoes be damned. The jacket, too. He heard Bucky and Peggy shout at him. Bucky’s was closer. Suddenly fingers dug into his shoulder and pulled him back. He grunted, kicking at his friend.

“No --” Bucky barked at him, struggling to wrap his arms around him. “Are you - ow - are you crazy? You can’t go there, Steve! You’re the son of traitors, they’ll - _stop it_ \- they’ll arrest you, too!”

“Let go!” the boy growled, digging his nails into Bucky’s arms.

“No!” the older boy shouted back, pulling him back to the gate of the mondana house. “Steve, stop it - ah, Steve, wait, stop, Steve, _Steve, St_ \-- AH!”

Bucky fell back as Steve ran off, kicking dust in his wake, as he clutched his bleeding arm. Pulling himself up, he grimaced at the snash. Steve’s nails, he could handle, but his fangs, not a chance.

He started to take off after him, but Peggy pulled him back.

“Bucky, stay at the house. I’ll get him.”

He shook his head, pulling away, “No chance. That’s my friend -- hylk!”

The woman squeezed her fingers around the boy’s scruff, bracing as she felt him sag against her. Quickly, she hissed at him, “Go hide in the mondana house. I’ll get him.”

Turning him to the gate, she released his scruff and pushed him to the house. He stumbled a bit before, straightening. His shoulders hunched as he slowly walked to the house.

Peggy hiked up her skirts and took off, keeping her eyes wide for that tell-tale pale gold of Steve’s crown. She only hoped that she would find him in time.

But she wouldn’t. Steve had reached the pavilion by the time she had started down the hill of the main street.

He pushed his way past people, squeezing through their huddled masses and trying to make out any of their cries and pleas through the blood rushing in his ears. People were shrieking. Guards were hollering orders. Oxen were groaning and stomping around.

Chaos. He was trying to push through pure chaos.

And finally he saw the noon sun shine in his eyes as he made through the other side of the pavilion crowd. The crowd was louder but as the white spots cleared from his eyes, he saw the hellish sight of the blood-stained pavilion.

If the Queen Mother was at the pavilion, she was long gone. It would’ve been out of the question for her to be subjected to a mass execution.

 _Execution_ . Steve could scarcely breathe. _Those people are dead._

Completely, wholeheartedly butchered. Throats and chests slashed open, clothing stained in red as flesh sagged together and drowned in the streams of crimson that had long since reached the white tile of the pavilion. Steve saw Bucky’s uncle at the top of the mound, face washed in blood.

“And now,” a voice shouted out. The crowd started to hush. “The execution of the leaders of the Bandas Poveros!”

The crowd roared again. Steve started to stand, looking up from the bodies, seeing a fuzzy outline of a set-up in the distance.

“First,” the guard - it was a guard. “the Irae-blood alpha woman, class bassnato, Sarah Alicia Rogers! Charged with treason, murder of a nobleman, and conspiracy to murder! She is to be sentenced to death by means of the pyre!”

The crowd lurched, wailed, arms reaching forward into the pavilion. The police armed their spears and pushed them back. Steve glanced to his side and noticed that he had pushed himself near the boot of another officer. Carefully, inched away, glanced back to the pavilion and finally saw the source of the crowd’s anguish.

His mother stood, stripped to her underdress, wrapped in rope around a mass of wood, straw littered all around her. Her hair was a mess, blood dripping through her brow from her crow. She’d been hit.

But then he looked beyond her pyre, as the noise of oxen snapped his attention. He stifled a wounded wail.

His father lied on the ground. His arms and legs bound by rope, and as his gaze drifted, he saw the ropes lead to the collars of the oxen, each surrounded by guards or officers. His face, too, was bloodied and bruised, and was stripped to his underclothes just like his wife.

“Second,” the guard spoke again, practically booming over the restless crowd. “the Irae-blood alpha man, class bassnato, Joseph Harvey Rogers! Charged with treason, murder of a nobleman, and conspiracy to murder! He is to be sentenced to death by means of the oxen!”

Once again, the crowd screeched and hollered, lurching forward only to jerk back as the police raised their weapons. Yet finally, Steve started to process what the crowd was screaming.

“They never killed anyone!”

“They’re innocent! You’re killing innocent people!”

“The woman’s pregnant, let them go you savages!”

“Murderers!”

“Silence!” the guard bellowed, raising a musket and sounding a blast. The boom cracking the air and shocking the crowd to silence. The oxen whined, and the guardsmen did their best to keep them still. “Filthy lot! Stand by and watch or continue to scream and be carted off with the rest of the treasonous boars!”

The guard turned to an officer that stood near the pyre and pointed at him, “Set it ablaze!”

The crowd began to weep, softly, pitifully. Steve looked forward in confusion.

The guard told the officer to light the pyre, but… his ma was still tied to it. _They need to untie her. Why is she still tied to the pyre?!_

The officer holds a blazing stick of wood towards his mother, tilts the stick to where her underdress meets the straw and pushes closer to let the flames lick onto a stronger vessel.

Steve’s seen fire spread quickly. It sparked and then blossomed into a velvet curtain of gold and heat. And yet it felt like an eternity as he watched the blaze swallow the straw and raze his mother.

He saw her jerk, her head swung to the officer that stood by her. He watched as she tilted back and then lunged her chin out. The officer jerked away, swiping at his own face; he hears a faint growl, and he gasps in horror as he sees the man swing the fiery stick at his mother, striking her face and pressing deep. 

He had heard his mother once scream and curse God when her fiddle had snapped a string, spliced her finger open and cut a gouge at her jaw.

It came nothing close to how she howled as the embers seared in her skin.

He hears his father yell from the ground.

The guard waves around the pavilion, gesturing to other officers and guardsmen, “Herd the oxen!”

At once the men near the oxen pushed against their collars, the bovines bellowed and huffed, heaving their lumbering bodies away from the center of the pavilion, the crowd starting to back away as some of the oxen walked past them.

The ropes pulled taut on his father’s limbs, he saw the man bear his fangs, seething. The oxen pulled far enough, and his father lurched from the ground, held up by limbs rigid. A large, startling pop sounded through the pavilion and he saw his father’s jaw fall slack.

And then his head jerked up, eyes wide, and Steve choked as he saw a spatter of blood bubble and dribble down the column of his father’s throat.

His father’s eyes darted through the crowd, frantic. Suddenly, he looked at Steve, and he heard the gasp that ripped from his father’s slack mouth. The horror, the fear, the anger.

Steve met his gaze with a trembling jaw and glassy eyes. His mouth opened, but sound was lost to him. What words did he have to say? So many. Yet none at all. Tears spill when it dawns on him that he hadn’t said anything to his parents that morning, when he left before dawn cracked and they were still asleep. He left them an arrogant note, a note that implied he’d come home and they’d still be there, waiting for him.

But they were _here_. _Dying_ _in front of him_.

Faintly, he heard the oxen moan, and more pops began to sound, and the crowd’s cries and disgust grew louder. His mother and her pyre crackled and grunted in the distance.

Then he realized his father’s jaw was moving. He was mouthing words. To him. He was speaking to him. He peered closer, trying to see the movements beyond the swath of blood, he grew confused. His father’s words held no meaning.

Yet they _did_. Because he thought hard, and he recalled that his father always said the most important things to him in his Irae mother tongue. Looking again, he tried to understand the message his father sent him.

 _It starts with Death_.

The New Year, Steve realizes. The New Year starts with death. It always had. The death of winter, of the ice and snow, of the freezing bitterness that pricked at people’s hearts.

His New Year starts with death.

An ugly twist and snap rings out, choppy and echo-y, as if it repeats itself. A haze of red jumps into the air and smashes onto the white tile. The crowd screams, harmoniously and ugly, like the shattering caw of a crow. The red haze stretches out in spikes, four, each going a different direction.

His father was missing from the pavilion. He hears his mother let out a savage wail that gets reverberated by the howl of the blaze around her. Her pyre crackles as embers and cinders flutter into the noon sky.

He shouldn’t have left his parents. Going out alone on the New Year brings bad luck.

He wished he had listened to his father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment! You're legally bound to tell me you're thoughts! :>
> 
> Most made up words are going to be me slaughtering the Italian language. I'm so sorry. And most of this AU's culture and worldbuilding is inspired by the Joseon Culture of medieval Korea. I watch a lot of K-dramas. If you can guess the k-drama that sparked this AU I will dedicate a chapter to you!
> 
> The New Year literally starts on the first day of spring in this world. Months are named the same, but they aren't in the same linear order!
> 
> Ferrite - the nation this takes place in, fictional Italy???? but not really...  
> Mondanas - female and omegan entertainers of the upper class. I guess you can call them fancy prostitutes, but it kinda does a disservice  
> Dames - term for women AND male omegas  
> Bassnato - lowborn people, the class between slaves and commoners. Servants and people who do undesirable jobs account for this class  
> The Scruff Thing - grip the nape of the neck and the person's body falls like lead. Often used to discipline children but can be used to subdue others when a danger to themselves or others  
> Irae - fictional Ireland, roll with it
> 
> [1/20/2021 EDIT]  
> I would appreciate y'all's comments! :>
> 
> WIPdates on my profile!
> 
> \- Boki 🌸


	2. Athshocrú Saoil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The immediate aftermath of the incident at the pavilion and everything that follows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey
> 
> Chapter 2 is here, yay!! With nearly 16k to satisfy y'all hopefully, sorry it's been over a month!!
> 
> Special thanks to these Discord peeps that happily cheered me on: Soul, Eve, Bucky Bear, Mairi, and Slythieamour!!
> 
> More world building explanations at the end!!
> 
> \- Boki 🌸

**II**

Steve didn’t stay at the pavilion long. He realized after his father was ripped apart and his mother’s screams faded into the ash and cinders of her pyre that he needed to make his exit. As the pavilion began to settle into some strange sort of calm, he feared there would be too many guards around to spot him, and too many dead bodies to look at and too much blood and ash to smell and breathe.

He backed out through the mourning crowd and quietly slipped past the raging chaos of the pavilion. He kept his head down but his steps casual and went wherever his feet decided to carry him. Whoever wasn’t at the pavilion seemed more eager to keep their noses to the walls rather than the streets, and the roads were more vacant than one expected on the eve of the New Year. The latter was understandable though - executions during the Thawing Days were extremely rare, out of principle to not dampen the festive mood of the season or bring bad luck. The majority of the town would rather not turn their faces to spectacles they believed would bring ill fortune, and so they holed in their homes and shops until the crowd and guards cleared away.

Nonetheless, less people out meant less people to see him, and he would take it. So he carried on through the empty streets of the town, quickly and surely. He never ran, a wandering eye would’ve found it suspicious, but he kept a brisk pace, weaving through the grid of the capital until shallow walls and frosted tallgrass and snow started to outnumber the buildings. Once he noticed he had passed the last of the sparse outlier homes and shops of the capital, his body surged and took off in a desperate jog, kicking up flecks of mud from the mixed snow and dirt.

Soon enough, the noise of the capital began to drown out as he carried down the timber bridge to the Woodlands. The rapid thick-yet-hollow echo of his footsteps on the hardened woodwork slowed his steps to a tired gait, and he settled to try a leisure walk back to the bassnato village.

It was strange to him. How the path to the main and upper capital from his home was so long in reality. Bassnatos were kept separate from the rest of the people and had an entire sub-village designated for their residence. If they were to have business or celebrate holidays within the capital, they had to travel down a shabby dirt road cut through their Woodlands over a mile long until they reached the bridge that connected them to the other sections of the capital, and then they still had to travel at least another half mile to reach the first capital residences.

Still, Steve marveled. Whenever he left with Bucky or his parents, he never noticed how long he actually traveled nearly each and every day, but now every step he made felt like an eternity.

It was too quiet now. The trees barely moved, and the birds had finished their morning songs. All that made noise was the thin drops of water from the melting ice and snow, his shoes as they scratched the cold dirt beneath him and his breath that seemed to come hot and ragged through his nose.

The loneliness made him bored in the worst ways, and his hindbrain felt harsh, silently berating him for feeling something so trivial as boredom in his current circumstance. But between the hollowness in his heart and the tiredness in his legs and the burn in his eyes from the tears that still kept welling up, he’d welcome the boredom that nagged in his skull.

Still, he kept pressing forward and sought to focus on something, anything, beyond the pangs of isolation. At first he tried the faint blur of the horizon that stretched out in front of him between the field of evergreen oak and spruce, and then he tried to admire the golden patterns of the afternoon sun painting unto the trees, but it lost its appeal when he realized he had stopped walking in the process. The sparkle of the remnant winter snow failed to catch his eye as it lost its glitter and melted from the sun’s heat. Once he caught sight of a starling jay and tried to keep track of it, but once it flew into the direction of the capital, he forced himself to tear his gaze away.

In the end he found the shoes on his feet as the object of his attention. As he kept walking and walking down the dirt road, he watched as the pretty works of leather creased and folded with every step he took. They were so shiny when he first put them on, a rich umber brown that sheened white at the slightest tint of sun. Now, after all the careless running and walking, he could see the shoes lose their deep and rich sheen, becoming dull and matted as he traveled further along the dirt road.

It then occurred to him that he never returned the clothes he borrowed from the mondana house. Without thinking, he had instinctively moved to go home without grabbing any of his old belongings. There he was, dressed in a rich, cerulean silk suit, embroidered in the pastel green, golds and pinks of the New Year and leather shoes. Leather and silk were expensive, and far too lucrative for a mere bassnato to ever own. He’d stick out like a sore thumb, and if a police officer started asking questions, he knew he couldn’t count the amount of bassnatos that would readily give him up.

How was he supposed to stay hidden back in the Woodlands when he’s dressed like an upper class pup?

Looking back over his shoulder, he pondered if he could try to enter the capital again and get his clothes. Instead, he clicked his tongue and shook his head, walking onward. If he went back to the capital now, he was risking giving himself away too easily.

Memories of the incident with Peggy and the police flooded into his vision, and his face scrunched up in displeasure. He didn’t have Peggy with him to help bail him out if the police found him. The capital was supposedly littered with wanted posters of him and if the incident with the police and bassnato was anything to go by, there were plenty of people actively willing to play spy and snitch for law enforcement.

How he ever weaseled in and out of that pavilion, he’d never know.

Going back to the capital was a bust, which sucked because Bucky was still there--

_Bucky!_

He stopped in his tracks, horror sprung on his face. He had left Bucky at the mondana house with Peggy. He had left him there after he _bit_ him. Disappointment welled up inside his gut and to his face, making it burn. How could he have been so feral-brained to bite his friend and ditch him?

Steve really had just run off without thinking back there. But he couldn’t help it at that moment. The reality of the situation didn’t make sense to him, he had just needed to see it to believe it - or prove to himself that it _wasn’t_ true. 

How do you just take your friend telling you that your parents got arrested for treason and accept it at face value? How do you not try to see your parents again? How could Bucky have tried to stop him like that? Didn’t he get that Steve had needed to see them? That he had to be sure? If Bucky had been in Steve’s shoes, then surely--

But wait. Steve brought his hands to his mouth, eyes shining from moisture. Bucky was in his shoes. He had said that his uncle had gotten arrested, too. And Steve had seen the man mounted on top of the stack of corpses in the pavilion. But was that all? His uncle was already a bloody corpse when Steve had reached the pavilion. Did Bucky watch them kill his uncle like Steve had watched them kill his parents? No, Bucky would’ve said, Bucky would’ve been more of a wreck when he found Steve and Peggy, he would have said--

Then Bucky didn’t know his uncle was dead. That he was an orphan just like Steve. Was he waiting down at the mondana house not knowing? Had he heard what had happened at the pavilion already?

What if he thought Steve had been caught and was dead with them? Sitting in that mondana house, thinking he was all alone.

A small, strangled noise ripped from the hollow of Steve’s throat.

Furiously shaking his head, he wiped the tears from his face. He _couldn’t_ go back to the capital right now. He didn’t know how to sneak through the streets without being spotted. But still, he wasn’t just going to leave Bucky. No, he’d go back at night, when it was dark and easier to sneak around the alleyways. For now, he needed to keep heading to the Woodlands. He needed to get some things from the house: change into another pair of clothes, take the reserve money, and whatever else.

He really just needed to go home. Just for a bit.

 _Focus, dammit!_ He slapped his face with his palms. _Focus!_ _How can we get home?_

If he stayed off the main road before he reached the village entrance, he could sneak back home without being noticed by the other villagers. He could sneak along the village wall and climb over it at the fence of his house near the wheat fields. No one would be in the fields; by this time everyone was holed up in the village or the capital to celebrate in the day’s festivities - regardless of what was happening at the pavilion. It may not have been the most certain idea he’s had - he couldn’t actually know if the fields were clear, but he didn’t have a better idea and there was no one with him to give him another option.

Decided, he dashed off the road and into the wave of spruce and oak, keeping a reasonable distance away from the path - enough to keep it in his view, but far enough to avoid the unexpected traveler. He set off to the Woodlands, determined in his run as he pushed through brambles and thorns, grunting as the bracken snagged the silk of his jacket and pants and wincing as he tugged himself forward. A lost investment, sure, but the least of his worries. No better than the melting snow sloshing over his shoes.

Still he carried on, trying not to care as he felt the woods literally strip the value away from his clothes, and kept his eyes on the faint view of the path adjacent to him. He wasn’t the fastest runner, Bucky with his years of good health trumped Steve’s pitiful record of seven years of winter flu. Regardless, he pressed on and on, roughing through the cold thorns and permafrost-ed foliage of the woods. After enough time, his mind would numb to the feeling of it. 

The shift and drag of the plants and branches around him started to fade into a rhythmic dull crunch and snap that tickled the hollows of his ears, mixing with the thumping of his heart and the blood flowing through his ears. All of it was present in his mind, but far too distant, like the sounds were swallowed whole and muffled against his skull.

It was the feral hindbrain again - the focus of his desires pooling deep into that dark pit inside his gut that fueled his drive, which led to some sort of basal panic and compelled reason, for whatever long, indefinite period of time, to fall to the wayside and let instinct take over. It made his body hum into gear, a flood of a more systematic type of adrenaline wash through his veins as the world around him blurred to where all that mattered was the single focal point of light that led him through the woods and the one word that whispered in his head at every moment. 

_Home_.

Little things of concern hardly existed to him in states like this. The ache that built in his knees was a phantom thought. The twitches in his face and grunts through his throat as hair-thin branches scratched and clawed along his head and neck were merely physical reactions, unconscious and involuntary - completely unnoticed (or too easily ignored) by the little alpha that was in control.

Steve didn’t lose himself to the alpha a lot. It was always extremely rare for a kid to succumb to the instinct of their dynamic - usually it happened under times of extreme fear or stress. Considering recent events, Steve’s regression wasn’t impossible, but even before the pavilion, he always had a tendency to fall prey to his own primeval urges. However, his fall to young savagery manifested in a strange way - not the usual crazed mindlessness that craved isolation and instant relief, but a switch to that of a calm and learned intuition that sought an objective wellness and longevity to his person.

The first time it happened was when he was five. Summer. His father had taken him into the woods beyond the wheat fields to go fishing. It had been late, with the sky bleeding red. He had gotten distracted by the fish that swam around his ankles and waded deeper into the thin river until he heard his father’s shout too late as he had stepped into the quick current and got swept away into the water. The panic was immediate because he couldn’t swim and he had remembered flailing aimlessly in the current, scrabbling at any stray boulder or low-hanging branch. He had managed to bob his head above the water once, stealing air and hearing his father’s shout once again before being dragged underneath by that merciless current.

But then that full-body hum rocked through him and thought became numb until all he had heard was _sink ground crawl_ . He had then stilled in the water and pushed out the air he had bottled so preciously in his chest as he sunk down to the river’s bottom. As soon as his hands had felt the firm mound of mud and rocks, his little fingers had dug into the ground, and he had pulled himself along the river’s bottom until he had felt the quick incline of the river’s bank against his hands. He had barely pulled himself out of the river when he had heard his father’s footsteps pound along the bank and he had suddenly found himself yanked up and caged in his father’s arms. The last he had remembered while being under the faint bodily hum was clutching against his father’s chest and burying his nose into his neck, chasing his father’s heat. The only thought echoing inside his head: _cold sire warm_.

The second time was when he was seven. Winter. A very bad winter, actually. The loss of his infant sister Shauna still raw, his mother had been bedridden from the grief - alpha-drop. The welfare office had closed shop as the officials had gone on holiday. Game had been ridiculously scarce and his father was scrounging for resources to make income and bring food to the table. He would go out every morning and afternoon and evening to try and hunt in the deep wood, but would always come back empty handed. Steve hadn’t eaten in thirteen days, and their well had nearly frozen over.

One afternoon, when he had been too rattled to stay cooped in the freezing house listening to his mother cry while his father was off searching for game, he had stepped out and wandered into the barren wheat fields, aimless and idle. Everything had been blanketed in the snow, but in the corner of his eye he caught the faint black dot of an animal’s eye, and he had turned his head to feel the faint full-body hum and loss of thought as he caught sight of a small, white rabbit sitting out in the middle of the field. If he had to think about how he had managed to spot it from the blanket of shimmering white, it was the shakes - the rabbit’s heart beating so fast to keep it warm but too big for its little body had made it a vibrating cloud in that unmoving white sea. _Hungry prey meat_ had echoed in his skull, and he remembered his body moving nimbly across the field. He had picked up a sharp rock and crouched down near the snow, aiming not at the rabbit’s head but at a ice-laden tree beyond it. The sharp crackle and clash of shattering icicles had startled the rabbit and turned its attention to the tree. Steve had vaguely felt his body surging toward it, but once he had felt that warm rabbit clutched in his arms, nothing else mattered but _meat blood eat_ .

That rabbit’s neck had snapped like a frail twig, and its hide caved under his fangs. Nothing had felt more delicious in that moment to him and nothing ever would, the warm, blood-soaked meat coating his tongue that alleviated both his hunger and his thirst. Yet the hum never left as his hunger was satisfied, because while he had fed himself then and there, he didn’t have food for later. _Sire dam meat_. With another sharp stone in hand, he had followed the scent of that rabbit all the way back to its burrow in the deep wood and ripped out as much of its warren that he could have handled alone. That full-body hum had faded by the time he had returned home, just in time to process the shock of his parents when he had presented them with three rabbits. They had all ate well that night.

The alpha that controlled him was something sage, and it kept him alive in times he could’ve died. He never questioned in hindsight if he could’ve done things differently. If he should have continued scrabbling for boulders and branches when he was five and hoped for the best, or if he should have thrown the rock at the rabbit and prayed it hit its mark. If Steve never went into that alpha subspace, he would have likely made those choices out of fear and naivety.

So he would never question why his alpha chose to slow to an unassuming walk around the Woodlands’ outer wall. The alpha knew it would lower his heartbeat and slow the flood of fear-scent wafting off his person, and that was all that mattered.

He only picked up speed when the alpha noticed the little stone-and-sod chimney of his home. As he jumped up to latch at the edge of the wall, he heaved himself over to the other side and dropped down onto the hay bales below. He hardly dusted himself clean as he took off for the patio door.

It was only once he hurled himself into the living room of the house did the hum in his veins and the blur of thoughts start to fade as the alpha began to ebb back into that dark pit of his gut. Its last controls over Steve used to to kick off the soaking leather shoes and practically rip off the silks of his suit and toss them all away into the depths of his room. The alpha had left entirely as Steve dressed in his other pair of winter wools.

And then it was just Steve again. Alone.

He staggered out of his room and back into the small hallway of the house, leaned up against the wall. His breath began to calm again from all the exertion and energy spent as he looked around the dimly lit walls of his home, illuminated palely by the cool-white afternoon sun filtering through the taupe shades of the windows. He could see the dining table and chairs folded against the patio wall, his parents’ bed mat and the small bookshelf cooped in the corner of the living space. And beyond them, he sees the dark cave of their kitchen, burrowed away in a tight hall not to be seen by anyone who didn’t live there.

The place was scarce for sound, nothing except for that dim and hollow static that buzzed in the ears when completely solitary. He sucked in a shaky breath as a hand reached for his mouth.

It was quiet. Far too quiet for what Steve was used to in this home. 

“Mam?”

It took him a second to realize the question came from him. He wanted to chastise himself, but the lack of a response caused a deep-rooted pang to rock in his gut and a part of him wished he could call the alpha back to deal with his emotions before he did something stupid.

Involuntarily, _desperately_ , he inched his nose out into the house and sniffed, searching for her scent. It was there, but not even close to fresh, hours old in dejection.

Slowly, he inched out from the darkness of the hall, arms wrapped around himself in some desperate attempt of self-soothing.

“ _Daid?_ ” it came out frail and high-pitched, trailing off to silence in the air. A wetness built up in his eyes again. His lower lip started to tremble.

He sniffed the air again, with the same results following. Sucking in a breath, he looked around the walls of the house, this way and that way and every which way he could as his mind miserably pieced back the information it already knew.

Denial was a quick-working and funny thing - funny in a sick and twisted way. Should be ashamed, actually. Making a little boy call out for parents he already knew deep down were dead.

Cruel, really.

But reality can be cruel, too. In the way it snaps away the lies and slaps the truth back in one’s face. Steve jerked back a little, between the trembling of his body and the breaths shuddering through his mouth, as reality struck him out of his own brief delusions.

His mother and father were gone.

 _Mam and Daid are gone_.

His chest hurt - as if he’d been pierced straight through his sternum - and a hand reached down to clutch at the phantom wound, the first seconds compressed like the air in his lungs before time continued and the pressure shot out the back of him, robbing him of breath and buckling his knees. A weak, straining wail wrenches itself from his throat and the tears pour down his cheeks as his arms desperately move to try and hold him up against the edge of the wall. They fail, letting him stutter miserably to the floor. He sucks in a wet breath, lurching forward and a frightful scream seizes out of him as he braces against the floor, back bowing and arching through the force of his gasps. He then curls into himself, rocking against the floorboards, sobbing and howling from that gut-churning pain that rocked through him, unable to be mended with linen wrap or soothed with honey.

He was suffocating. He was dying. He had to be. The breath in his lungs was non-existent and no matter how hard he tried to suck in air, he could only cough and sob and clutch at his chest. He was dying. Maybe he wanted to be dying. Then he could be with them again. Then he wouldn’t have to think about how alone he’d be without them. How he’d have to spend every day for the rest of his life knowing they had been burned and ripped apart without a shred of mercy. How he’d left them in the early dawn of that early morning without a care in the world and watched them die that very same noon. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel this crushing, dragging, suffocating weight of regret and anger and sorrow that made his body feel like lead and tears burn and his chest hurt. 

Did he ever tell them how much he loved them? Did they know how much he cared? In the end, what did they think was true? What were they thinking of him when they left? Had he been a good enough son to them? Had they known how wonderful he thought they were?

Steve was just a boy. He spent his days playing with Bucky throughout the capital streets. He made mischief when he was happy and fought big-mouthed bullies when he was angry and slept in his bed all day when he was sad and wept like a baby in Mam and Daid’s laps when he was upset and scared.

Yes, he did chores when he was asked, but he hardly did anything to repay them for all the nonsense he put them through. The tantrums he threw at them when he was a toddler, the disobedience he shoved at them when he was learning sentences but ‘No’ was his favorite word. The anxiety and gray hairs he raised from them whenever he got himself into trouble or went about misadventures that scared them into thinking he was testing his own mortality. The fear he gave them each winter when he fell with some new illness that drained his face and stripped his strength. The shocks he’d give them when he’d suddenly recover without a hint of his prior troubles.

He would never get to repay them for any of the hell he gave them - intentional or not - in all the twelve years he had with them. And he would never get to repay them for all the years he lost with them.

He’d never finish his hunting lessons with Daid and prove to him that he really was a great shot. He’d never get to show Mam the painting he’d finished of her and her fiddle. And in months and years that would follow, he wouldn’t get to tell Mam about a crush he’d get on a dame from the capital and let her tease him about it. He’d never get to ask Daid for advice about how to let that dame know how he felt or if it was even worth a try. He’d never get to rely on Daid for help when he’d get his first rut and start to become a man. He’d never get to ask for Mam’s help on making edible food to prove to his future intended that he could take care of them, too. He’d never get to ask them to help give him the courage he needed to ask for his future intended’s hand. He’d never get to have that final talk with Daid before he went out and got married and left their home to become the head of his own.

All those years and future memories he’d never get to have. Crushed and stolen by a pyre and four fucking oxen.

Through the blur of tears, his nose catches a slightly stronger trail of their familiar scent and he briefly crawls over to the bed mat propped against the wall. He snags at its edge, ripping it down and jumping for it as it lands on the floor. He claws over and rolls onto its middle, balling himself tightly against the mattress. He buried his nose as far as he could, huffing in the remnant scent of his parents between his shaking and sobbing. Daid had always smelled of straw and turf and game, always working on shoes by the open fire and hunting for them. Mam smelled like heather and furze, something uniquely hers that Daid said was always a reminder of the land they hailed from. Mam would say that Steve was like that, too; that he had a scent natural to him borne of his heritage. She would say he smelt like the Irae sea, a salty pang of familiarity or the unknown. Steve never quite understood because he’d never seen any sea let alone Irae’s.

He wished he did now.

The tears kept staining down his cheeks, hotter along the flush of his face. He cried until he finally sagged into sleep, only regretting that he could never ask them to take him to the sea. Not anymore.

.oO0Oo.

He woke with a start.

Sitting up from the mattress as a sharp, harmonious crackle ripped from the distant outside, it took him a few moments to realize the darkness around him wasn’t because of him but because it was nightfall. The house was washed in that overlay of woad with only a faint and dim orange filtering through the front window shades.

Crawling to the front of the house, he pried the front door open as more fizzles and pops rung outside. Steve squinted from the sudden brightness and blinked, easing himself to the change in light. Suddenly, the noise boomed louder as he heard the clamorous shouts and shrieks of laughter and chatter roar from the village. Looking up at a streak of white that whisked up his periphery, he discovered the explosive bursts of sound were from the New Year’s fireworks being launched into the sky.

He sniffled, softly cringing as he felt the cracks of sleep and tear stains shift along his cheeks. Shutting the door, he slowly rolled unto his feet and walked to the mattress, intending to settle back down and lay there for some indefinite amount of time, wallowing in his own sorrow and misgivings of what to do next.

 _Fuck that!_ He snarled to himself, lips drawing back in irritation. _You know what to do_.

He had slept the entire afternoon away, but with night shadowing over him now, it was time for him to grab his things and set off back to the capital and find Bucky. All he hoped for was that Bucky was still holed safely away in that mondana house with Peggy.

After a few extra moments of staring down at the bed mat, he closed his eyes and let out the breath he’d been holding. Stepping forward, he moved to rest the mattress against the wall again, hesitant as he pulled himself away from the fabric.

He turned to the hallway and walked to the end, where that ugly box of worn down shoes lied. He kicked it to the side and crouched over the frayed board of wood that stuck out from the flatness of the wall _just so_. Arching the tips of his fingers, he pried the board off the wall and reached deep in between the foundation and brick and dirt for that mid-sized box of everything precious and dear to Mam and Daid.

When he felt the brush of deerskin, he thrust his other arm into the hole and felt for a good grip. He yanked the box out, and let out a huff of air as the shift in weight forced him to roll back and his tiny body just tumbled and twisted a bit down the hall. When he stopped, feet bracing against the wall, he sighed and moved to brush the mild layer of dust and wood flakes off the precious brown box.

Opening it, he leaned against the closest wall as he assessed the contents: that worn burlap sack filled with coins that Daid would keep adding to every month or so, his old baby’s gown, a tiny portrait of Daid that Mam had wanted before he had fought in some war, documents of immigration, jewelry.

Money and memories.

Out of all the papers and trinkets, the baby gown drew his eye; it was unfinished. And he then realized that it wasn’t his - it wasn’t even supposed to be a baby’s gown but a dame’s baby dress.

No - he remembered with a start, as if the light flickered in his head - it was supposed to be Shauna’s; a little gift to celebrate her 100th day. The memories were vague, but he remembered seeing Mam sit at the dining chair, knitting away and humming nonsense. But Shauna had died before they could celebrate. He remembered how loud Mam had wailed for days on end after she passed. And, bitterly, he remembered how coldly some of the village had shunned their house after. Shauna had been born in the end of autumn, but she died in that deep, harsh winter, and a death in winter was a herald of ill fate - no one wanted a part of it. No one in the village would buy shoes from Daid for the rest of that winter. Mam thought that someone had told the welfare officials about the death and that was why they started closing the office when she and Steve came for their turn - after she had finally recovered from her alpha-drop. Steve _starved_ for thirteen days because everyone and their dam thought his sister dying meant they were all bad luck.

 _Why keep this?_ He pulled the dress out of the box and brought it close, trailing his fingers across the finely knit weaves of wool. Mam was always the best at knitting. Mam was the best at everything involving fabrics and strings. Shauna would’ve looked so pretty when the dress was done, but she never got to wear it, so - still, Steve wondered - why keep it?

And the chilling reminder of his mother’s swollen belly had been all he needed for an answer.

It made sense in a way. Why waste a good dress? Mam had been so sure the pup would’ve been a girl, too.

 _Doesn’t matter now_ . He dropped the garment back down into the box, resting the back of his head against the wall. That pup got eaten by the same flames that swallowed Mam. That little dress would go to no one, not anymore. Unfinished. Unworn. Destined only to be a reminder of what _clearly_ never meant to be.

He tried to squeeze his eyelids taut as a familiar, wet burn rimmed his lashes. Chin up, he blew a gust of air through his nose and tried to settle under the faint cacophony of noise from the outside and the beat of his own rapid heart.

Wait, no. His heart couldn’t be beating that fast. And it didn’t beat sharply, either. Like shoes chasing up the ground.

 _Footsteps_ \- He realizes, anxiety flashing through him as the hairs on his neck begin to stiffen. Fast approaching and clamorous - more than one _\- two? Three? Three._ They were coming closer and closer to the house, until - suddenly - the footsteps skidded to a stop. Steve moved as quietly as he could - he shut the box - inching towards the house front, trying to focus on the approaching figures. Faintly, from the orange glow of the festivities beyond, he could see their silhouettes through the sheer drape of their door.

“You sure this is the place?” a strange and deep voice came from the group.

The hairs of his neck stood so straight he felt as if he was being yanked backward.

“Yes, officer!” a weaker voice that sounded pleading and desperate. Steve quietly backed into the hall. “Another patrol of officers had come here in the morning, too!

It was silent, but he heard their footsteps come closer to the door. He picked up the box and moved to his room, trying to keep his steps light as he moved across the floor. He heard the deep voiced man yell from the outside.

“This is the Rogers house! We’re looking for Steven Rogers!”

Steve takes his tattered rucksack and shoves the box and ragged silks and leather shoes inside.

“Find that boy!”

He slings the bag on his shoulders and rushes through the hallway and streaks to the patio door.

“Yes, sir!”

He flings through the patio door and slams it shut in his haste, and Steve would be damned if that wasn’t what gave him away. He snatches the straw shoes on the patio edge and fumbles them on his feet as he hears the shock and commotion of the men as they burst into his home from the other side.

“Who’s there? Stop!”

_Like Hell!_

He runs to the hay bales and springs on them to boost his reach to the walls edge, and he barely makes it over the other side when the men slam through the patio door into the backyard. When he rushes over the top, there’s a faint scent of cosmos that catches his attention, but as soon as he lands on his feet, Steve flies.

He streaks along the wall’s edge as fast as his feet can take him, the jostle of his heavy rucksack his only hindrance. He ran as fast as his legs could carry him, even when they immediately started to burn, completely worn out from all the activity earlier in the day. It was only then that he finally noticed the ache that throbbed in his body, striking numbly through his very bones. 

He could faintly hear the shouts of the guards in the distance, but they faded quickly as Steve continued running and running, ignoring the booms of the fireworks above and the laughter of the villagers in the breadth.

It was terrifying. Running beyond the shallow walls and wheat fields into the woods in that deep veil of night, with only the distant lights of the village’s dimming glow and moon shining his path. But terrifying or not, he had no choice anymore. He had to run back to the capital now, try to blend into the crowds of festival goers and make his way back to the mondana house before anyone noticed a little bassnato boy like him was out of place. So he ran and ran deeper into the woods, back to that timber bridge and prayed to God that he would make it there with little trouble.

Soon, the light of the village faded away. The starlight clouded by the dark web of the evergreens that stretched above.

The darkness of the night makes the woods alive with a different type of unfamiliarity. The trees and bushes blend together seamlessly, the dirt path is barely visible in the black nightfall. The slightest shift within the cloudy blanket of sable would stutter the breath looping through his lungs, clench his heart and jolt his body into a minor state of panic for just the faintest second before he had to conclude it as nothing more than the night wind before continuing onward. Hyper aware of every single noise that surrounded him: his breath, footsteps, snaps of twigs and bracken, shudders of the trees when the wind pushed around their trunks. All of it was present in his mind.

Eventually - after what felt like running aimlessly for nowhere - he finally reached the bridge, tracing out it’s outline against the pitch dark void that warned of the ditch beneath it. A laugh of relief peeled out of him, being reminded how close he was to the capital after dashing through the never-ending woods.

But when he noticed the fast approaching amber glow of lanterns and torches, the pale glitter of chrome sheaths and the faintest hint of crimson in the distance beyond him, that smile fell away into a slack jaw. Jarred, he stopped in his tracks before he hastily felt out for the soft slope near the bridge, holding his breath as he carefully climbed down underneath the massive woodwork. He had to be careful with his steps, too hasty and he would slip into the shallow creek below.

He huddles into a ball underneath the bridge, flinching as he sees the lanterns’ glow come closer and the harmonious and rhythmic footsteps of the capital’s guardsmen jogging in unison growing louder.

As he watches the light of the lanterns force shadows from the edges near the bridge, Steve does his best to quietly shuffle closer to the center, avoiding the slightest hint of golden light. Silently, illusions of words mouthed by his lips, he prays that no guardsmen are lingering around the bank, peering at the bridge’s bottom from a distance to see his silhouette.

Soon enough, the footsteps pass overhead and fade far off into the distance, but he stays still as he waits for the light carried with them to blur away. The enemy of one’s enemy is their friend, and if no light protects him from the eyes of the law, then an ally he would make out of it.

He waited for several moments more, huddled under that giant bridge, quiet sans for his soft and shaky breaths. Turning his head, he observed the faint reflection of the moonlight against the small flow of water beneath his feet. It was a dim silver, no trace of a golden glow, and the only sound that carried in his ears was the soft trickle of the ice overhead that softly melted into the ground.

 _Go._ He hears in his hindbrain echo - the alpha demands. _Go!_

With a deep breath, he moves to slowly sneak across the ditch to the other side of the creek. Why risk being spotted on the bridge when he can just go under? He’s careful with his steps, feeling out for delicate twigs and leaves and the soft give of water, and pressing down firmly with every sure step. The creek had thawed out for the most part, even with the cold air of the night, and he grimaced at the sharp sting of the cold water seeping through his straw shoes. He’ll need to get to the capital fast and get somewhere warm; frostbite is the last thing he wants to worry about.

Finally at the other side of the ditch, he reaches to crawl out from under the bridge, feeling out for grips in the cold, soppy mud beneath his hands as he heaves himself up the sloped bank. The strap of his rucksack clings tightly to his shoulder as it’s pulled down against him, leaving him feeling an aching burn as he carefully claws out from the ditch. He staggers up to his feet once he feels the ground even out beneath him. He’s dizzy when he fully stands, vision wavy and balance off as the rucksack tries to pull him backwards, but he fights against it. There’s a light pounding against his forehead - thirsty.

He begins to walk away from the bank, blinking quickly against the darkness, trying to make out anything among the shades of midnight that obscured his vision. His lips wobble as his jaw shakes, his body fighting against the urge to yawn, tiredness fighting against adrenaline - the strangest and most unlikely combination in a situation like this.

He readjusts his bag, moving towards the main road. He would need to move quickly. The large patrol of guardsmen would definitely run into the ones that were at his home, and then they’d turn their direction back to the capital. As long as he was a step ahead of them, he would be alright. Soon he’d be able back at the mondana house, with Bucky, and he’d finally be able to apologize for biting him and running off. He’d get to sit down and warm up and fall asleep to the enticing orange glow of the hearth like the one he felt tickling his hindbrain--

No - _wait_ \- that was his periphery sight.

 _Light. Danger._ _Run._

The hairs on his neck begin to stand.

“Hey! You! Stop!”

He turns his head to see a lone guardsman running back to the bridge, lantern dangling in hand. The faint glow of his comrades visible in the far distance.

_Run!Run!Run!Run!Run!_

He turns back to the pitch black of the main road and takes off, blood thrumming through his veins. He slings his bag around, clutching the bulk to his chest and using its weight to pull him forward as he surges down the path.

There was a clamor of noise behind him. The rapid pounding of footsteps trailing him from a distance. A distance that he feared would be quickly closed.

It’s a gamble, changing direction and heading off the road. It always is. Night makes it more risky. Every step he makes must be with purpose. Without hesitation. Every second he takes will be another second the guardsmen can catch up with him. If he runs into a tree, he can’t groan at the pain and stagger up, he has to run it off. Run and run until he’s all alone without a single person in sight. Run and run until he’s safe within the walls of the mondana house.

He bolts off into the deep woods, veering through shrubbery and bramble. He grunts through his teeth as he moves up through a shrub laden hill. It’s hell on his legs, his knees aching as they force himself up and up. In the back of his mind, he is grateful when he feels the ferns and tall grass tickling at his chest. If they hinder him, they’ll hinder his chasers; and they’ll spend more time thinking he’s hiding within the foliage rather than still running.

The faint glow of the lanterns fades far away from his periphery as he crests the peak of the hill, stumbling across the level ground as he maintains the route to the capital. He keeps running through the trees, wincing from the pain as low branches and thorns swipe across his face. He tries his best to bat them away, but he struggles to be careful. Too rash and he’ll cut himself, the slightest trace of blood on the branches and the guards will sniff him out.

In relief, he hears only his footsteps in his ears, and the smell of any guardsman is long since stale. The power of determination and fear - a powerful and effective duo of motivation.

Eventually, a glow haunts his periphery. In the faint distance, he sees light, an stagnant dim yellow. A muffled crackle in the distance and bursts of pale color far above him. He’s nearing the shallow walls just outside the capital. He’s nearly there. 

His missteps, failing to see that he was running along the edge of another hill, and he scarcely makes out a gasp of shock before the grip of the earth pulls him down.

The breath is knocked out of him as his back hits the steep side, and he’s forced rolling and sliding down the bumpy slope of the hill - matted with slushy snow and mud and leaves. His rucksack snags against a root and Steve’s jerked against the earth before his own weight frees him and he’s skidding to the bottom again. He attempts to control his fall, shifting his legs and hands, scrabbling for a hold, but all he gets a sharp and hot burn against his hand. It rips out a cry of pain as he pushes away from the hill and is forced to rapidly tumble down the rest of the way.

He lands at the bottom with a hollow thump, his fall broken by his heavy bag, but not at all cushioned with the box inside. He wheezes in and out, lungs refusing to work as he struggles to pick himself up, neck and shoulders burning as they bear the weight of the bag. He’s wet, with snow with mud with dew and whatever else. Leaves and grass stuck to his clothes and face. He staggers forward, determined not to let the distance he created between him and the police be shortened any further. 

He bears his teeth when he tries to wipe off some of the grime and wetness from his face, raising his hand to see a faint wetness on it reflecting in the moonlight. A brief sniff tells him it’s blood, and tears burn the rims of his eyes. He scrapped his fucking hand. He hopes he didn’t leave a print in the ground.

Curling his wounded hand in a fist, he carried on, feet managing only into a light jog. His legs ached, his shoulders burned, his hand stung and his eyes were weary. He was exhausted, tired, hurt. He just wanted to stop. To sit down on that wet forest floor and wait for the ache and burn and sting to end.

But he couldn’t. It would be the end of him if he did. And he couldn’t do that to his parents, who would have gladly given their lives for him. He couldn’t do that to Bucky, who was waiting for him. He couldn’t do that to himself, who deserved better than this.

So he carried himself forward, wading through the tallgrass as he moved towards that stable light. It was a distance above him now, he’d fallen below the view of the capital’s walls. But he could get there. Eventually, the sting in his hand would fade and he'd be able to climb back up to the main road. 

He’d be fine. He tried to tell himself as he swatted through the tallgrass. Pushing forward through the weight of mud and snow. He’d be okay. He’d make it.

_I’m fine._

But the guardsman that filled his view broke his empty words.

He stood there, completely still as he met the man - the alpha’s - gaze.

It was a hardened stare. His jaw set in a firm scowl as he stood there, completely straight and domineering in posture. The faint glow of the lanterns in the distance illuminated his person, and Steve could see the immaculate and put together uniform. The solid black ensemble with threats of red and silver weaved within its patterns and accessories. His hat rested impeccably centered on his head. Steve could see the many buttons and pins with the Ferrite lily embellished on their surfaces. He was missing a cape, but something like that would’ve gotten in the way in the heat of a manhunt like this anyway. 

This was a very high-up policeman. Maybe even the Police Chief himself.

An alpha towering over him in a policeman’s uniform that screamed unrelenting authority was the last thing that Steve needed. But he got it. 

This was it. This was the end for him.

The tears just started to fall. His breath felt nonexistent.

And then the man spoke.

“Are you Steven Rogers?”

He couldn’t lie. Maybe that’s what made the tears and sobs shake out faster. All he could do was nod his head. If he spoke, he knew he’d only blubber.

The alpha’s gaze held no emotion. Just a vacant stare from dark eyes. And so Steve was waiting for it. The lurch forward, the hand that would reach over him and scruff his neck, immobilizing him to carry over for judgement.

Or maybe there would be no judgement. He’d given them the chase all day, maybe the order was to take him in dead or alive. Maybe he was about to get his throat slit right then and there. Have his lifeless body carried back and dumped with all the rest that piled in the pavilion. 

_Bucky, I’m so sorry._

“Did you know what your parents were doing?”

He looks up, surprised. How could he have expected that question?

The alpha was still waiting for an answer.

So Steve tried to stutter out between the sobs, “N-no. No! I didn’t! I swear I didn’t!”

The alpha only blinked.

And something tugged at the back of Steve’s mind. A wishful thought. An impulsive gamble. But he was desperate, and the alpha inside him saw an opportunity.

“If my parents really did lead the Bandas Poveros,” he starts to say, trying desperately to keep his voice even, “they made sure that I never knew.”

The dead silence of the night does nothing to ease his nerves. The alpha only continued to stare, but Steve saw a faint tensing of the man’s jaw.

_Careful._

“Please, sir,” he brings his hands together in front of him. Praying for the man to listen? Praying for God to help him? Both? He couldn’t say. “Please, let me go.”

The alpha blinks again. Still, he remains silent.

“ _Please_ ,” he’s begging. He hates it, but he knows that he is. “ _Please_ , let me go. Just this once--”

“Leave.” The alpha finally speaks. It’s deep and raspy.

Steve is only left in awe because he wasn’t expecting it to work in all honesty.

The man jerks his head to the east, “I said ‘leave,’ pup. _Go_.”

The east leads away from the capital gate, but he could still manage a way to sneak in. He always did. Steve nods his head at the man, his breath shaky.

Maybe it’s because he’s still looking at the policeman in disbelief that he speaks again, “It’s just this once. I won’t be the one to kill a pup. But if I find you again, I won’t hesitate to _arrest_ the pup of criminals.”

The alpha walks past him, likely to meet up with his fellow patrol.

Steve sucks in a harsh breath. The other declarations he could accept. He’s being given a gift, being spared - and it was all based on the alpha’s moral grounds, lovely. Being told that he wouldn’t get a second chance if found again? _Fine_.

But he was _not_ the pup of a couple of criminals.

Maybe he’d look back on this later and call it the idiocy of ego. But that was then. This is now.

He whips around and glares at the back of the officer, “My parents weren’t criminals. They didn’t deserve to die!”

The man keeps walking. It makes him so angry. There’s a wetness in his eyes again.

“Daid swore to never pick up a sword against anyone before my parents moved here!”

The man stops. But Steve’s still so angry. The tears trickle down.

“My daid made shoes.” he’s shaking. His jaw is trembling. “My mam’s-- my mam was about to have a baby. They couldn’t do this! Even if they lead a group to help slaves, they would never _kill_ people!”

The man turns to look at him, eyes narrowed. The man’s heady bergamot and oak scent still lingered near him.

Scent. _New scents._ Rich cosmos.

_Wait --_

Steve jerks up in revelation, “Someone was at my house. Someone that was never there before.”

The man turns completely to face him, face impassive but eyes questioning.

The scent had been faint, but not as faint as his parents’. Someone had come to his house between the time his parents had left for the capital and the time Steve had returned home. Based on the staleness of it, Steve had to say the person had come just after his parents had left. If whatever patrol had stopped by his house that morning _after_ the cosmos person had come, then _they_ may have been the reason that his parents had been seized. If the police had found any sort of evidence to implicate his parents for the murders, then that cosmos person had been the one to plant it there. That had to have been the case. It _had to be_.

He tells the alpha exactly that. Based on the shock that grew across his face, Steve knew that he was onto something. 

He continued, determined, “The cosmos I smelt isn’t something you find in the Woodlands. Whoever was there was upper class. From the upper capital. Maybe even a court person.”

The last bit was a bold assertion, perhaps even a fatal mistake on Steve’s part. Anyone of low birth claiming a noble committed a crime was punishable as class impiety. Children get off with a straw mat beating or even a lost limb at maximum severity, but considering Steve’s predicament, he may have risked his whole life.

So he was scared when the alpha straightened his posture. Yet, the look in his eyes let Steve know it wasn’t from disbelief or his own impertinence.

It was because the alpha knew that Steve was right.

“Please, sir,” he starts. The cold air and wet clothes hardly mattered to him now. His focus on the alpha refuses to let him notice the slowly growing glow in the distance. “You have to find that person. Whatever it was that made you think my parents killed those nobles, that cosmos person was the reason!”

The alpha looks as though he’s about to say something, but a faint shout in the distance tears away his attention. Steve follows the sound and, horrified, he sees a patrol of policemen flanking the south of him and the alpha.

They have arrows drawn at the ready.

To Steve’s surprise, the alpha was quick in action.

“Stop!” the alpha shouted to them. “This is Chief Castle! Don’t fire!”

They either don’t hear him right or they don’t hear him at all, and they release their arrows, launching them over the alpha and straight for Steve.

He stays still as long as he can, trying not to flinch as the arrows land within mere inches around him. Thoughts are starting to become clouded again, the alpha wants to take over - he’ll gladly let it happen.

He feels himself backing away, never breaking his sight from the line of policemen that begin to ready their bows once again. He sees the man - _Chief Castle_ \- run at them, arms wide and shouting for them to stand down.

He knows he’s still doing what Castle told him to do. He’s backing up to the east, hoping that the man is able to have the patrol let him go. And from what he could see, he believes that it just might happen.

But Steve should have been looking in the direction he was walking. And he should have slung his bag to his front. He should have paid better attention with the lantern light at his advantage.

He cries out as the ground gives out under him and falls back. He thinks he saw Chief Castle look back with something close to shock before his vision was obscured by the long, rough side of the hill. Eventually, his back smacked along the ground, and he felt himself tumbling over.

And then his head cracked against something sharp, and his world was black and quiet.

* * *

* * *

When Steve wakes up again, there’s a warm light casting against this face. It’s a warm glow makes him sigh in some sleepy form of gratitude. He twists over to chase it, welcoming it’s soft warmth over his closed eyes.

But his eyes snap open when a hand touches his shoulder.

Bolting up, he looks around to find the culprit, but a horrible throb pangs in his head, and all he feels he can do is reach up to clutch at his head and whimper. He’s shocked to feel a linen wrap around his head.

“Steve,” a familiar voice echoes out. “I’m so sorry-- I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Blinking through the ache, he lifts his head to look at the source of the voice. She dressed in a soft red evening gown, and her hair is styled up, but her face is still the same.

He wants to cry.

“Peggy?” he breathes out. She nods with a sad smile. “Am I at the mondana house?”

She lets out a wet laugh, a wetness shining her eyes, “Yes. You are. I sent some men to look for you after you didn’t come back from the pavilion.”

“But how did you find me?” he squints at her, and wincing when it puts pressure on his skull.

She scoots closer to him from the foot of the bed and reaches over only to suddenly press a glass against his lips. Initially taken aback, he moves his head and accepts the drink, moaning softly when he feels the cool wash of water run down his throat.

“I gave them your scent -- from your clothes,” she said as she made sure he downed the whole glass. “And they patrolled between the Woodlands and capital the whole time. When they heard the policemen gathering, they just made a gamble that it was you and, well, that’s how they found you at the bottom of the hill near the southeast gate.”

While Peggy puts the glass down, he looks around the room. It’s kept pristine and tidy. There’s boxes tucked in the corners, a single night stand at his side, the lantern and water glass are standing on it. Peggy’s sitting on the bed, _he’s in the bed_. The bed is very tall, and it has a canopy. The curtains are all tied back, but they’re a soft pink color, and he’s forced to remember exactly where he is.

He finds himself suddenly embarrassed to look at her.

“Am I,” he starts to ask, and looks away when her attention sharpens to him, “am I in your room?”

Her lips flatten to a thin line, “... Yes. It’s the only place the head mondana would let you stay -- even with all the favors she owes me.”

The last bit was muttered to herself, but the answer only made Steve have more questions. 

He straightens up against the pillows, hands resting along the covers, “How long have I been out?”

He had noticed that he was in extremely clean clothes, and he could feel that he’d been washed. The soft candlelight told him that it was nightfall, still, so he could assume that he’d only been out a few hours, and that it was approaching dawn. Yet, Peggy’s evening wear told him that it was still serving hours. So it was at least a day since he had been knocked out.

Peggy’s looking down, not facing him. Then she looks up to meet his gaze.

“Four days,” she says with every ounce of seriousness she has. “You hit your head pretty badly.”

He only nods in acknowledgment. She then asks if he could answer some questions for her. She tells him that she needs to make sure he hasn’t lost any memories and remembers basic things - head trauma? So he lets her do her inquiry: full name, class, dynamic, age, lineage, closest friends, recent whereabouts. He could see her visible discomfort when he retold his day after seeing his parents die, so he tried to wrap it up just as quickly as he had started. She smiles again. Tells him that he did a great job. That it appeared he was going to be perfectly fine. 

After a moment he apologizes to her.

Clearly confused at the apology, he explains, “Wherever you had to sleep these past four days. It was because of me. So I’m sorry. It was bothering me to not say something.”

She leans back, eyes wide, before she snorts and lets out a short laugh, the curls of hair that framed her face jostling with every bounce of her head. She carefully swipes a finger under her eyes before she smiles back at him, something mischievous, knowing.

“Oh, Steve, please,” she starts, gesturing to the rest of bed’s wide expanse. “This bed is made for two _very large_ people. I am average. You are small. I slept here, too. Just on my side.”

She leans over to cup his cheeks, which were quickly flushing pink, “You never inconvenienced me. Don’t worry.”

He musters out a soft ‘okay’ before ducking his face from her hold.

“Wait!” he suddenly looks back at her. “Where’s Bucky?”

Her smile dips slightly, a furrow between her brows. Steve feels a great weight pulling on his heart, waiting for her answer.

There’s so many thoughts that race through his head while she’s silent. Did Bucky go out looking for him? Did Bucky get caught? Was _Bucky_ dead? He didn’t think he could handle hearing that. Not after what he put Bucky through.

Her voice is very soft when she speaks, “He’s going through a Drop, right now.”

Drop. _Alpha-drop_ . _Omega-drop._ That ugly and scary phenomena when an alpha or omega falls into a deep and immobile state of melancholy and heartache. Alphas succumb when they feel like they are incapable of protecting or caring for those they love, or when they believe they’ve been abandoned. Most adults fall when they’ve lost their mate or a child. But children can Drop, too; when they’ve lost family, feeling abandoned and alone. What makes Drops absolutely terrifying is that if the alpha or omega is left alone for too long, no one there to look after them, the Drop can prove fatal.

“When--” he tries to ask, voice hollow.

“Just happened yesterday.” she cuts him off, moving to get up from the bed. “He was so relieved when he heard that we found you, but seeing you unconscious for so long just -- it -- it set him off. It’s bad, Steve.”

_It’s so bad, Steve._

Bucky said that to him at the mondana house. When he told him that his parents had gotten arrested. That was before the guards started killing people.

He decides that he doesn’t like it when he’s told a situation is bad. It only seems to always get worse.

Steve moved to follow her lead. When she tried to caution him, he brushed her off. This was his fault. _No, Peggy,_ it was! He should have never left Bucky alone. They were best friends, practically brothers! And Steve bit him and left him alone in the capital with only the mondanas to look after him. It was an awful thing for him to have done.

Look what happened. Steve forced himself into a cat and mouse game and nearly died at least five times before he was finally found by Peggy’s men. Bucky had to wait _hours_ before he learned if Steve was even alive, and when Steve finally did get brought to the mondana house, he was unconscious for four days with a giant bloody linen wrap around his head. To Bucky, who had likely already heard the fate of their guardians at the pavilion, seeing his only remaining family lying in a bed, not moving - as good as dead - what was he supposed to do? How was he supposed to feel?

Instincts have a tendency to go as hard as possible when responding to stress and fear. This is why Drops exist, no matter how self-destructive they are as a response.

So Steve is completely serious when he asks for Peggy to take him to where Bucky was being held. And, when she realizes that she can’t argue with him, and when he seems just as determined to avoid her attempts to scruff him and put him back to bed, she relents. She takes him to another dame’s chamber - Kellan’s - where Bucky was. Kellan had been working out in the house pavilion providing service that did not require the use of his bed - a dancer - similar to Peggy’s work as a conversationalist. Peggy tells him that a beta from the kitchen was looking after him, making sure that he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit or tears.

As they approached the room, Steve could smell the unique combination of smoke cedar and sap that could only be Bucky. And a sad whimper ghosted his throat when he smelt the despair that weaved between the scent. The throbbing against his head began to feel harsher, but he pushed down his discomfort. It wasn't about him right now.

His friend needed him.

The sadness hits him full force when he enters the room, and he can’t help but feel the breath still in his lungs when he sees Bucky lying curled up in the middle of a bed similar to Peggy’s, the canopy sheers tied to the bedposts. There was a tray of water and soup on the nightstand alongside a porcelain bowl with a rag and several towels. A beta woman was sitting down in an armchair nearby, anxiety stricken across her face as she only looked at Bucky’s prone form.

When she noticed that he and Peggy had entered the room, she immediately stood up and gave a quick bow before moving over to them, eyes still trained on Bucky.

Whatever she said to Peggy about Bucky’s condition, it was static in Steve’s ears. All he was focused on was doing whatever he could to stop whatever he was seeing become of his friend.

He rushes to the side of the bed, ignoring the ladies’ protests. They’re betas, they don’t understand. Kneeling down, he rests his chin on the comforter, face level with Bucky’s that was obscured by his messy, unwashed hair. He presses his body as close to the side of the bed as possible, stretches his head as close to Bucky as he can.

Bucky’s just lying there, completely still. His breath is shallow and looks like nothing but an illusion of life. He looks so pale - a stark contrast with his matted, dark hair - with cracked lips from dehydration. His eyes are lidded and hollow, no semblance of warm or vitality reflecting against them.

If he wasn’t the only one who could make this better, Steve would go cry in a corner and wait for the adults to fix everything. But that can’t happen. He’s gotta be the strong one. He’s gotta make this better.

He sniffs at Bucky, slowly reaching out with his hands, keeping them low to the sheets. He carefully picks the hairs that stick to the older boy’s head, revealing more of his vacant expression. Steve swallows back the bile that rises in his own throat, and, instead, does his best to pull a smile on his face.

“H-hey, Buck!” he calls out, soft but energetic, cringing slightly at how wet it sounds. His eyes are wet, so his vision’s blurry. “It’s me!”

Bucky doesn’t move at all, and despair still wafts off of him in waves. Steve’s heart lurches.

Lips pressed to a thin line, he surges forward onto the bed, stepping into his friend’s territory. They’re not related, so Bucky’s alpha could still see him as a threat. But dammit, they’re family to Steve, always were. He moves to cup Bucky’s neck with his hands, and he presses his face down to rub himself over Bucky’s hair, trying his best to cover him in his own scent. If Bucky thinks he’s dead, then smelling his scent so close should help jar him out of catatonia.

“Come on, Buck,” he sniffles, voice cracking, bumping his forehead all over his friend’s cheeks and crown. “I’m _here_ ! I’m right _here_!”

He keeps trying. Over and over again, rubbing his scent around Bucky with hugs and croons and calling his name, hoping that it finally clicks, that it jumps him out of his stupor, that it raises him from the Drop and brings him back to the world.

He can’t imagine how lonely and scared Bucky felt. Sitting in a room and waiting for answers. Seeing his only family left unconscious and never knowing when they’d wake up - if at all. Steve never wants him to feel like that again. He’d do anything to make that happen.

He wasn’t supposed to lose Bucky like this.

They were supposed to be together ‘til the end of the line.

“Steve?” The sound is rough.

He jerks his head back, wide eyes as he looks at Bucky’s questioning expression. The boy’s eyes are cloudy, as if he can’t see where he’s supposed to look. He sniffs the air, and Steve wants to laugh when he watches the latter’s face contort in shock and confusion, completely miffed at what he smells.

“Who else?” the wet chuckle peels out of him when Bucky’s head whips around so fast to face him, eyes wide and bright, quickly becoming shiny and wet.

And then it’s a lot of grabbing from both sides. And hugging, and holding, and rolling around on the bed for dominance because _no I missed you more are you stupid?!_ _Don’t you ever ditch me again!_ And then there’s the tears and the wobbly smiles and the sob-laughs because the past five days have been absolute _Hell_ and they’re just so glad to be back together again.

Steve tries to apologize for the bite, for the accidental abandonment, for the four days of comatose, but Bucky just punches him in the shoulder and tells him not worry about it. And Steve cries for mercy because _hey, I’m injured here!_ And then Bucky moves to poke and prod at all the bandages wrapped on Steve because he really did get fucked up so badly. His head was the main thing, but there were patches all over his face and neck and hands from the thorn scratches, and there were wraps on his feet that were apparently there to help the frostbite, a wrap on his hand that had gotten shredded from when he fell down the first hill. Steve did his best to combat the assault, but to no avail.

Eventually, Bucky relents, and pulls away with a smile.

“This is almost as bad as when you fought stupid Ezzi Audi,” Bucky chuckles, still clinging to Steve.

A snort forces out of his nose, “Nah, Ezzi just gave me a black eye, remember? Jonny Capone gave me the concussion.”

“Oh yeah.”

So they go back and forth, easing themselves into some sort of calm. Treading light waters as they try to come to terms with the reality that they’ve been dealt with. Peggy and the other beta eventually leave them, understanding that Bucky is fine now.

At some point, Steve gets Bucky to eat the food that was left for him, and then he does his best to wipe the sweat off of his face when he’s done. And then Steve turns somber and spills to Bucky all he can about what he discovered when he had returned to his house.

Bucky takes it all in stride, but a yawn rips out of him and then triggers a similar one to push out of Steve. And they both silently agree to deal with their new discoveries in the morning.

So they sleep.

.oO0Oo.

“Are you sure that this is a good idea?”

Steve sighed and nodded his head. Bucky had asked him this question for practically three days now. He doesn’t know why, his answer remained the same every time.

When he had finally been able to sit down with Bucky and Peggy, he told them everything he knew about the cosmos person and their presence at his house. Peggy confirmed that the cosmos he smelt was something contained within the upper classes of Ferrite, and it made Steve’s crazy idea even more desirable.

Peggy had argued that he and Bucky needed to leave the capital, start someone fresh in the outskirts of the nation, away from the scandal, safe from the police. She had offered to get adoption papers ready for them, and find them the earliest ship out of the capital. But Steve declined. He wanted to work in the Grand Palace.

Bucky and Peggy were both aghast at his suggestion. He was out of his mind, he had to have been. But Steve held firmly. He needed to find the truth, and his best bet was to stay in the capital to do it. And he couldn’t force Peggy and the mondana house to hide him forever - that wouldn’t have been fair. But the Grand Palace - the residence of the royal family - was practically untouchable from the police, it was never searched for low-rung bassnato by the police. Patrolled by guards who were trained by the finest military officials, diligent security checks at the entry gates for errand servants, visited by only the highest members of society.

If Steve was going to be protected anywhere while getting anywhere, it was at the Grand Palace. Sure, he’d definitely have to work there for a long while - weeks, maybe years - to earn his keep, to build a trust in there before he tried to poke around where he shouldn’t, but that was a sacrifice that he was willing to make. And like hell Bucky was going to let him go about it all alone. 

Peggy only managed to roll her eyes, realizing that Steve was serious, Bucky was with him no matter what, and that she had exactly the right connections to make such an extensive request happen.

So here he and Bucky were, almost three days later, waiting patiently outside an artisan supplier shop with all their belongings in hand as they watched Peggy have what had to be the most hushed and heated conversation possible with a palace omega.

She was a small and beautiful lady, with long fiery hair and green eyes so bright that even Steve could see them from the distance where he stood. Her uniform was a pretty sky blue, with delicate accents of white and navy. It was not the most intricate design, but it was embroidered enough for Steve to know that she held a position of some importance within the palace.

Whatever Peggy had finally said to her made the lady’s face sour and then it fell with complete and utter defeat. Finally, the women both turned and walked towards the two boys.

“Boys,” Peggy started, gesturing to the redhead beside her. “This is an acquaintance of mine, Gail Richards. She’s the head maid of the palace’s Arts & Music department, and is willing to take you both on.”

Steve and Bucky are eager to bow and give the lady - Gail - their thanks. They were ecstatic.

Gail only scrunches her nose at them before side-eyeing Peggy, “Ugh, Carter! Ya didn’t say they were alphas.”

“ _Richards--_ ”

The redhead waves her off, “I’ll still take ‘em, but ya betta make sure they know what they’re signin’ up for.”

Peggy sighs and kneels down to meet both Steve and Bucky’s gazes and to be somewhat on their level. She places a hand on both their shoulders, looking at them with complete and total seriousness.

“Richards is doing me a big favor,” she says, looking back and forth between both boys. “You have to tell me - both of you - that you know perfectly well what it means to become a slave of the palace - because that’s what you will be, _schiavos_.”

They nod their heads. Her grip on them only tightens.

“I mean it.” it sounds almost desperate. “When you enter the palace, you’re lowering your status. Whatever rights you had as a bassnato are gone, you will be owned by the palace. Every action you make must be careful, or you could lose your life. And you can't just back out when things get dangerous. You're in this forever."

Steve brings a hand to place over hers, squeezing it reassuringly, “I understand, Peggy, I do.”

“And I gotta stick with him,” Bucky supplies with a grin - looking far better than he did days prior. “So I get it, too.”

With a deep breath, she bows her head before turning to look over at Gail, who stood sourly away from the scene, and dryly rips at her, “They’ve been thoroughly warned. They still want to go.”

The omega groans, lifting her chin to the sky to voice her disapproval, before looking back at the three.

“Very well,” she says as she walks over to them. She looks down at the single bags the boys carried. “Is that all you’re bringin’?”

Steve nods, a little sheepish, while Bucky tells her firmly that it’s all they have.

Gail straightens, clearly uncomfortable about the whole situation, “Well, say your ‘goodbyes’ and let’s get movin’. We need to get back to the palace before two.”

So they do. Steve can’t seem to let Peggy know enough how grateful he is for all she’s done for him and Bucky the past week. She only knew him that one morning on New Year’s Eve, yet she spent the following days doing nothing but keeping him and Bucky safe from the police and other prying eyes, risking her own reputation and even her life to keep them from harm’s way. It had meant so much to him and, starting to tear up, he was afraid that he wasn’t able to articulate his words well enough for her to know. But she cupped his face in her warm hands and pecked his forehead, reassuring him that his gratitude was wholly received.

Bucky had thanked her, too, doing his best to keep it light and cheery, sending himself off with a corny joke and cheap pick-up line that they all knew fell flat but laughed about it.

And then they parted ways. Peggy waving demurely back at them before turning to head back to the mondana house. Steve and Bucky waving back before following Gail to the Grand Palace.

They did their best not to instinctively hide their faces from the guardsmen as they reached the entry gate, simply trying to follow Gail’s lead through the giant wooden doors that lead to the one place Steve and Bucky never once believed they’d ever step foot in their entire lives.

The Grand Palace.

It was enormous. Buildings upon buildings lined around each other, built with study stone and decorated with beautiful paints and tapestries, large columns and archways outlining the paths meant to be taken by staff and all other officers. They first walked across a giant courtyard, immaculate with pure white marble finishing for the walkways, completely vacant sans the rows of bustling servant staff and palace officials.

They all walked with purpose, completely confident and sure of their places and destinations. Ministers and their subordinates, military officers, court maids and eunuchs, departmental staff, and so on and so forth. Each different role symbolized with its own uniform and colors. Some walked with arrogance and fearlessness in their stride, like the ministers who seemed too busy to talk to each other rather than look where they were going. Some walked with complete rigidity and boldness, like the royal guardsmen who kept their backs straight and their eyes level, one hand at their side and the other at their sword, always alert. Others walked with overwhelming grace and humility, like the eunuchs and maids who kept their heads down and arms crossed over their waists. And others ran about like the world was ending, the departmental servants - which for them, maybe it was.

A sharp whistle had jarred Bucky and Steve from their awe and they looked embarrassed to see Gail several feet ahead of them, fuming with annoyance and her hands rested against her hips as fists. She stalked over to them before turning around and grabbing both of them by hand and proceeding to march over to the Arts & Music department, determined to keep the boys by her side at all times. 

She swore that they were the beginning of the end for her.

Eventually, after weaving through the opulent grid of the palace courtyards (re: plural), they finally made it to the hustling and bustling department of Arts & Music, and immediately sent to get their uniforms and be put to work.

And so their labor began.

Grueling labor it was. Even after a couple weeks to find some semblance of a routine, the work was taxing. They would have to rise before dawn to get dressed and go prepare the supply carts and work stations of all the artisans that worked in the studio, and then go ready the practice hall for the orchestra with their sheet music and instruments. By eight, they finally got to eat breakfast, snagging a roll of bread and roasted meat from the previous day’s dinner. It was a short break, and then they were being beckoned and hollered at by all manner of staff in the department: by higher ranking servants to go fetch more pigment or a spare string, by artisans to throw out failed projects and trash, by the musicians to find their instruments or sheet music or the right part of their uniform ensemble. They learned quickly how fast they needed to be when at the beck and call of workers on commission, and how to properly handle instruments and their materials. And between all of that, be sent off here and there to run errands for members of other departments in the palace.

By the afternoon, the boys would have to take all the dirty laundry and clean it with the palace laundry maids, working the clothes through lye and soap on the racks, learning to work fast to not burn their hands. Pounding against the fabrics to root out hidden dirt, adding solutions to parts in formal garb where the artisans had stained with paint and holding the clothes to soak for minutes before pulling them out and beating the water out of it. Then hang the clothes on the rack and beat the leftover water out of it again until all that’s left to do is let the sun and gravity take care of the rest. The first time they had to do the laundry, it wasn’t the task that brutalized them - for they’d washed their own clothes plenty of times before. It was the amount of clothes they had to wash that did the number. One or two pairs of pants and shirt? Fine, boring, but doable. Forty to seventy pairs of intricate uniforms? Murder on the knees, the arms, the legs, the back, the neck, the whole damn body! Their first week was nothing but cruel hazing, forcing them to do the laundry all on their own with no help, and then running them around senseless errands just for the nonsense of it.

They would spend the rest of the evenings similar to the mornings, ordered around by everyone and their dam, realize they missed lunch and were starving, and pray for nine o’clock to come faster while they continued to get rung out by their senior staff. And then it was nine, and so they would snag what little porridge and meat they could before scurrying back to their little beds in the crowded edge of the slave’s barracks and try to talk about how one another’s day went.

By ten, they were as washed up as could be, tucked into their narrow cots, sleeping soundly as they chased what few dreams they could manage and hope for wake time to be as far away as possible.

But one night Steve found that he couldn’t sleep.

He could only lie on his cot, staring at the ceiling as restlessness tore away at his thoughts. The frustration only built as he tried to resist. In the end, he could only force himself up and tiptoe around the group of cots, careful not to disturb any of the slumbering staff as he snuck out of the barracks and walked to the artisan supply storage.

He hadn’t painted in weeks. The urge was wholly impulsive, but it warred in the back of his head and he lost himself to the nostalgia of picking up a brush. And the scene that he pictures in his head refuses to leave and he fears that if he doesn’t paint it now then he’ll lose it forever and _that just can’t happen_.

So he goes into the storage shack, and he picks out a charcoal and a few brushes and a palette and whatever paints he can think of and he tries to think of where he can create the vision in his head. And when it finally comes to him, he grabs a sack to put all the materials in before rummaging for a stool.

He walks to the wall behind the shack and uses what little wit he can muster while half-awake and musters himself to the other side, being careful at the noise he makes because sometimes the guards patrol the area and sometimes they don’t. The walls were the same height of a normal door, a little less than twice his size, but enough to feel a considerable amount if fallen from. He struggles not to wince when he slips on the way down and lands on his butt.

But he picks himself up because that little image will not leave his head before he paints it. He knows he’s in a garden of sorts - probably the most magnificent garden he’s ever set eyes upon. Between the labyrinth of walls, there’s blooms of all sorts, magnificent scents and colors all around, reflecting the light of the moon and starlight so beautifully. It’s shocking to him, to realize that he’s wandered into a fabled Moon Garden. 

Whenever he cleaned the roof of the storage shack, he would always see into the other side of the wall and look surprised to see such a large array of land so dull and lifeless during the day. It was why he figured he could go paint there; it always looked so desolate and abandoned. It had always confused him because he could always see another plot of land filled with rich and vibrant colors. None of it had made sense to him before, but now it does.

This garden was to bloom at night.

Some of the blooms were obvious, like the common moonflower and Casablanca lily. Yet there were so many other different flora between the shrubs and vines, many of which he couldn’t begin to name. Many shimmered a luminous white but were all shaped and sized so differently from one another. There were others that radiated an unusual vibrancy with their shades of yellow or magenta. From the corners of his eyes he could see large and radiant trees towering in the distances, blooms of incandescent purples hanging off the branches.

The area shimmered around itself, each blossom reflecting the moonlight and becoming its own unique source of light.

With a startling jolt, he remembers how his mother used to play for the Royal Orchestra. It granted her access to the palace. He wonders if she ever had the chance to see something as beautiful as this.

He hopes that she did.

He wandered through the garden for a bit, gazing at the blooms in awe until he felt like he had found the perfect place - a wall perpendicular to one he used to enter into the garden - to paint the image stuck in his heart. He had to paint it here.

And so, with the natural light of the garden as his only guiding hand, he stood on his tiny stool and laid out a sketch - a shimmering overlay of blue to comfort him as he worked. And then, over the course of the night, that sketch was layered with paint, each line placed down with a purpose. Hours passed and patches of color became intricate patterns of clothes and people and buildings. Another pass of a thin brush and he brought out the small details: the lashes and crows feet, the seams in the silks, the nicks in the wood. Splashes of color carved by careful strokes into a nostalgic picture.

And when he was finally done, and feeling a little cheeky, he took one last stroke of white and penned a single ‘S’ in the corner. 

He smiled to himself, pleased at the vision he was able to immortalize on the wall.

In a moment of distraction, as he packs away the materials he had used back into a bag, he turns his head to look up at the sky - the moon, maybe? However, he was caught by a different source of light, rich and golden, shining from above.

Far from where he stood, there was an open window a story above where the wall connected to a building. It was ornate, framed by beautiful vines of orchids and ivy, decorated with carefully crafted bolts that sparkled in the starlight. But the light that shined from the inside of the room the window hid was what drew his attention.

A lie. A boldfaced lie. The light caught his attention. The man in the window was what kept it.

Steve could see the bust of him clearly from where he stood. He’s looking away from the window - sitting at a vanity (?) - dressed in a nightgown, delicately touching his own face and neck, seemingly to check for any changes or out-of-place looks. His hair was thick and dark, almost like ink, but the light from the room made it clear that there was a richness hidden within the thick strands. His skin seemed to glow a pale bronze and Steve could sparsely see the faint rose that tinted the soft arch of his cheeks. He could nearly hear the alpha inside faintly growl in frustration from not being able to see the man’s eyes that surely had to be as pretty as everything else about him.

But he could faintly see his slightly down-turned lips and almost wanted to curse out how a faint heat rose to his cheeks at the sight. He could hear his own heartbeat drumming in his ears as his breath feels caught in his throat, the grip on the bag in his hands becoming slack.

The man wasn’t doing anything particularly noteworthy or strange. Just sitting next to the open window with - what Steve could only assume - only his thoughts to comfort him based on the demure air seemed to envelop him, countered by the warm light that framed his very countenance.

Yet - _still_ \- Steve could not tear his eyes away from the enchanting scene above him. For after all these taxing and frightening first weeks of the New Year, and all the arduous years in the Grand Palace that he knew were sure to come, he managed to find some sort of peace for himself - a solace to comfort him in his restlessness and discomfort. And it had led him to become enthralled by a shining light from a flora-framed window, allowing him to catch a glimpse of what he knew _had to be_ the most beautiful person in the world.

He’s jarred from his spell when a dull clatter reaches his ears and the panic is quick to set in as time seems to slow down for him. His body works seemingly on overdrive as he moves to pick up the bag and the stool, turning on his feet just as he sees from the corner of his eye the man in the window move to look outside in the garden - searching for the source of the noise.

He sprints to the wall back to the shack, launching himself for a grip on the edge and hauls himself overhead, hoping that he had been quick enough to escape the window’s view and retreat safely back to the other side of the wall, unnoticed despite his fumble.

He realizes with a shocked grin that his heart is still beating fast, and he isn’t sure if it’s still from the adrenaline of almost being caught or the flutters that rolled in his gut caused by the window man. Whichever it was, it didn’t matter to him.

He had loved painting in that glowing spectacle of a garden, the serenity and peace he felt when he painted there. And if continuing to paint there would give him just one more chance to see that vision of a man in the window, then he’d happily do it again.

He would paint in that Moon Garden again and again and again until something like Fate would have to try to stop him. 

And even then, he’d just keep trying.

This was his new life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You are legally bound by law to share your thoughts in the comment section below!
> 
> Hope ya enjoyed! :3c WIPdates are on my profile!
> 
> Hooray for Frank and Gail being introduced!!! <3
> 
> World Building Notes:  
> \- Again, to be clear, the New Year in the world is March 1st, and spring has already started. For future reference, a year will start with March and end with February  
> \- The caste system in the made of world is loosely based off of the Joseon caste system; bassnatos (lowborns) are the lowest caste before slaves, and they do that jobs that need to be done but are seen as undesirably by the elite; they are considered somewhat "untouchable" in the negative and are made to live in a village outside of the main cities and towns. They're the in-between of commoners and slaves.  
> \- Schiavo are slaves
> 
> [1/20/2021 EDIT]  
> I would appreciate y'all's comments! :>
> 
> WIPdates on my profile!
> 
> \- Boki 🌸


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